Germany ready to help Lebanon clear up oil spill By Wolfgang Heumer

Deutsche Presse Agentur
Published: Thursday August 31, 2006

By Wolfgang Heumer, Cuxhaven, Germany- Huge globules of oil washed up on sandy beaches is the sight that oil-spill expert Ulf Bustorff fears most. The German engineer will be putting his skills to the test shortly in Lebanon, where an oil slick triggered by the Israeli bombing of a power station has polluted the nation's coast.

Bustorff has just returned to his base in northern Germany from a four-day inspection tour of the affected region and is busy readying equipment and personnel to help clean up the pollution.

But what he saw in Lebanon does not alarm him.

"I wouldn't call it a disaster," says the man who has spent more than 15 years dealing will oil spills all over the world.

In 1991, just after the Gulf War, Bustorff was called in by Saudi Arabia and Bahrain to help clear up 1.5 million tons of oil from Kuwaiti refineries and pipelines that seeped into coastal waters.

In 2002, he helped clear up an oil slick from the tanker Erika than sank of the coast of Brittany in northern France. A year later he was in action in Spain, trying to prevent an ecological disaster caused by an oil leak from another stricken tanker, the Prestige.

The pollution in Lebanon is nothing like that caused by the two oil tankers, according to Bustorff.

"The beaches are polluted over a length of 150 kilometres, but it is mostly along a narrow strip that can be easily removed with the help of excavation machinery," he says.

In the days after the airstrike on the power plant in mid-July, there were fears the leaking oil would form a huge carpet, causing widespread damage to the coast.

"It's not as bad as that," says Bustorff, whose Disaster Control Centre has state-of-the art equipment that can also deal with oil or chemical spills at sea before the coastline gets polluted.

The northern German port of Cuxhaven, where Bustorff is based, also has four special ships and two sensor-equipped reconnaissance aircraft to help combat oil spills.

There are also numerous smaller vessels, oil booms to contain slicks and equipment to remove the congealed oil if it washes up on beaches.

Subject to approval by the German government, Bustorff and his team will travel to Lebanon with several container-loads of equipments, but will not become actively involved in the clear-up operation.

Instead, they will show the Lebanese how to clean up the mess. "Helping people to help themselves is our goal," says Bustorff.

The Disaster Control Centre was established in 1998 after a freighter caught fire off the German coast and drifted helplessly for days until authorities could agree on who was responsible to deal with the blaze.

© 2006 DPA - Deutsche Presse-Agenteur