Bati Kartini

Pollution Inquiry Comes Up Empty

A probe into crude oil contamination in the Thousand Islands district has cleared a local oil refinery of blame, an investigator said on Sunday.

Police said that even though tests indicated that tar balls polluting the area had not come from an oil and gas installation near the island cluster, the investigation would continue.

Adjutant Chief Comr. Eko Saputrom, the head of the natural resources unit of the Jakarta Police, said samples of the tar had been compared with oil produced by PT CNOOC, the operator of the only oil refinery in the Thousand Islands area. He said laboratory results showed that the samples differed from the oil produced at the refinery.

“The lab results of the latest pollution case are finished, but the samples did not match any [of the company’s products],” Eko said.

He said other possible sources of the tar included a spill from one of the tankers that plied shipping lanes in the area or the nearby Balongan refinery.

“It’s possible that [the material] came from a passing tanker. But we would have a hard time proving this since there are so many ships passing this route,” Eko said. “We’ll keep looking into it.”

The head of the Thousand Islands district, Abdul Rachman Andit, said the pollution had badly damaged the ecosystem in the area, adding that he had urged authorities to continue their investigation. “There has to be a commitment to this,” he said.

Records indicate that there have been eight such cases of pollution in the Thousand Islands since 2003, none of which have been solved. In October last year, crude oil washed up on the beaches of Tidung, Payung, Lancang and Pari islands. The worst contamination ruined a two-kilometer stretch of Pari Island.

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