By Chen Aizhu and Ben Blanchard
BEIJING (Reuters) - China has closed the Dalian Xingang oil port in its northeast, home to the country's largest oil reserve bases, after crude pipeline explosions spilled oil into the sea, but the main facilities there are undamaged.
State oil major PetroChina, which operates two major refineries in Dalian, has set up a contingency plan to cope with one week's closure of the main oil port that receives foreign crude vessels regularly and also a main export point for gasoline and diesel.
PetroChina has started trimming refinery operations at one of the plants, the 200,000 barrel-per-day (bpd) West Pacific PetroChemical Corp (WEPEC), by about "several thousand (metric) tons" per day.
"The port was sealed right after the explosion. We have a one-week contingency plan, but are hoping that the oil spill can be cleaned up as soon as possible," the oil executive told Reuters on Monday.
Dalian Port said in a statement to the Hong Kong stock exchange that the accident had not caused any direct damage to the oil terminal's main facilities, the impact being limited to ancillary facilities such as control systems.
"The magnitude of the damages and losses caused by the accident and its impact on the operations of the Group and Dalian Petro China Warehousing remain to be further assessed," it said.
Maritime safety authorities are also battling to contain a 50 sq km (19 sq mile) oil slick after two crude oil pipelines exploded in the northeastern port of Dalian, state media added.
The oil executive said contamination on about 10 sq km of sea area was "quite serious."
Hundreds of firefighters battled for more than 15 hours to extinguish the blaze that started late on Friday when a pipe transporting crude oil from a ship to a storage tank blew up, causing a second pipeline nearby to explode.
RBS oil analyst David Johnson said the cost would not be significant for PetroChina's state-owned parent CNPC, at an estimated $50 million.
"It's not going to be a major cost in the big scheme of things. It's going to be in the tens of millions of dollars, not tens of billions of dollars," he said.
"The question is, who owns the oil in the tanker and whether the oil is insured. But some of them will have to pay the clean-up costs. The question is, who's going to be liable? It's like the BP story -- whose fault is it?"
Johnson said the oil spill could lead to tighter rules and regulations on the oil industry.
The incident drew the attention of top Chinese officials, including President Hu Jintao, Premier Wen Jiabao and security chief Zhou Yongkang, who all issued statements and instructions during the blaze.
"Though the oil pipe blast in Dalian has caused serious damage to the environment, it is not comparable to the BP oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico," Zhao Guojun, from the Shanghai Academy of Social Science's Centre for Studies on International Affairs, told the Global Times.
"Whether or not the blast was caused by inappropriate operations by foreign oil ships, the incident is controllable," Zhao added.
SEA CONTAMINATION
There were no casualties, but state television said oil had contaminated the ocean off the port city in Liaoning Province.
The storage facility is jointly owned by Dalian port and China's top oil company China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC), parent of PetroChina.
Shares of Dalian Port fell 4.4 percent, while PetroChina stocks lost 1.3 percent.
Workers are using skimmers and dispersants to break up the oil slick and stop it spreading, the official China Daily said. The pollution is concentrated about 100 km (62 miles) offshore.
"By Sunday evening, about 7,000 meters of floating booms had been set up and at least 20 oil skimmers were working to clean the spill," the newspaper quoted local officials as saying.
There are no residents within 3 km (1.8 miles) of the affected site, and little "marine farming," the report added.
The Xingang oil storage site, where the explosion happened, is home to one of the country's first government-held emergency crude stockpiles and a larger commercial crude reserve base built by PetroChina.
It is also a transfer spot for two nearby major refineries, Dalian Petrochemical Corp and WEPEC, both operated by PetroChina with a combined crude processing capacity of 600,000 bpd.
The blast happened when a Liberian-flagged tanker was off-loading oil, the China Daily said.
The cause of the blast is under investigation, and CNPC, the parent of PetroChina, said monitoring of the air and sea environment had been stepped up in the affected areas.
(Additional reporting by Sui-Lee Wee in Hong Kong; Editing by Ramthan Hussain)
