SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The U.S. Coast Guard said on Friday it was investigating an early morning spill of bunker fuel from either the tanker Dubai Star or a barge alongside it in San Francisco Bay.
Coast Guard spokesman Erick Swanson told the KRON television station the two vessels had been transferring fuel and the slick from the spill was estimated at 1 mile. Additional details were not immediately available.
A spokesman for Heidmar Inc, which operates the Dubai Star within a group of tankers, said the Norwalk, Connecticut-headquartered company was in the process of gathering details of the spill and was preparing a statement.
The spill came eight days ahead of the two-year anniversary of a shipping accident that caused a massive fuel discharge into San Francisco Bay.
In November 2007, the vessel Cosco Busan struck the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge in dense fog and spilled 53,000 gallons (220,000 liters) of fuel oil into San Francisco Bay, fouling 26 miles of shoreline along the iconic California waterway.
(Reporting by Jim Christie and Braden Reddall in San Francisco; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)