Date: 29-Jan-10
Country: US
Author: Joshua Schneyer
NEW YORK - A waterway in Port Arthur, Texas, used to supply oil refineries in the region was partially reopened to ship traffic on Wednesday, after a tanker collision and oil spill on Saturday had caused its closure, the U.S. Coast Guard said.
The key Sabine-Neches waterway, which serves four major refiners that process up to 1.15 million barrels a day, was reopened to "limited" tanker traffic after the removal of the leaky Eagle Otome tanker from the waterway overnight, the Coast Guard said in a statement.
The Eagle Otome, an ExxonMobil-chartered double-hull tanker, collided with a barge on Saturday and spilled around 11,000 barrels (462,000 gallons) of its sour crude oil cargo, prompting a cleanup that still involves almost 900 workers.
The incident led to rate cuts at least one refinery. Motiva's 285,000 barrel-per-day Port Arthur plant cut rates by 100,000 barrels a day since Saturday, sources familiar with the refinery's operations told Reuters.
"We are doing everything we can to provide much-needed relief to the region's four large refineries," the Coast Guard said in a statement.
The Coast Guard said it removed the Eagle Otome from the channel and was unloading the rest of its 570,000-barrel oil cargo at Sunoco's Beaumont, Texas, terminal on Wednesday.
Earlier Wednesday a Coast Guard spokesman said there were at least 12 outbound ships waiting to depart through the waterway, while 14 ships were waiting to transit in, as of the last tally on Tuesday night.
The channel should be open to more traffic late Wednesday, the Coast Guard statement added. Outbound traffic will be allowed passage first, followed by inbound ships.
So far, oil spill responders have recovered around 534,000 gallons (12,714 barrels) of oil/water mixture from around the site of the tanker collision.
(Editing by Lisa Shumaker)
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