SHANGHAI ? ConocoPhillips says it has collected 99 percent of the offshore spills in China's Bohai Bay and expects to meet a deadline to finish its cleanup by Tuesday.
China's State Oceanic Administration, meanwhile, criticized the oil company's handling of the spills which began in June and said it would work with those affected, reportedly including scallops growers in the area, to seek compensation for damage.
Of 16 small seeps found in the Penglai 19-3 oilfield, only two were still visible and known to be sometimes active, ConocoPhillips China said in a statement Wednesday. It says the seeps are of residual oil and drilling mud that has been shifting to the seabed from beneath a layer of sand.
"As an extra precaution, the company will continue to search for and cleanup any residual mineral oil based mud that we may encounter," it said. Such mud is used as a drilling lubricant.
Similar to earlier reports, the company, which operates wells in the field in a venture with state-owned China National Offshore Oil Corp., said about 2 liters (a half-gallon) of oil and drilling mud were being released each day, with minimal damage to the environment.
The company said it is working on long-term solutions to prevent recurrences of the spills, which it has said were possibly triggered by pressure from drilling injections that leaked through natural faults in the seabed.
China's oceanic administration and environmental groups have accused Houston-based ConocoPhillips of being slow to react to continuing small seeps within the Penglai field. It says oil spread up to 5,500 square kilometers (2,124 miles), with the worst damage in a 870 square kilometer (336 square mile) area.
State-run media reports have likened the incident to last year's BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico, though the 3,200 barrels of oil and mud released in Bohai Bay is a small fraction of the 4.9 million barrels unleashed when the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded, spewing out of control for months.
ConocoPhillips said it has permanently sealed the fault where the seeps have occurred and has placed containment devices over them to capture any leakage.
"There is no oil reaching the sea surface from the seep," it said.
The intense public scrutiny of the incident appears to reflect a renewed effort by China's environmental authorities to crack down on a wide range of problems, including toxic metal contamination, failed sewage treatment systems and unsafe handling of dangerous waste.
It also reflects growing concern over the marine environment along the country's heavily industrialized coastlines, where water quality has steadily deteriorated over recent years.
ConocoPhillips' says its own sampling of oil particles found along several thousand kilometers (hundreds of miles) of shorelines found that only five of 75 samples appeared related to the Bohai spill. Most appeared similar to fuel oil, it said.
Along the way, the survey crews collected 13,600 kilograms (nearly 30,000 pounds) of trash, the company said.
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