Collision spills oil in Mississippi river

OREANDA-NEWS. September 04, 2015. A collision between two tow boats caused a barge to spill as much as 250,000 USG of slurry oil into the Mississippi river near Paducah, Kentucky, the US Coast Guard said.

The agency responded to a call about the accident at mile marker 937 yesterday at 9:22pm ET. The collision damaged the barge which caused the spill. The agency closed part of the Mississippi river to all traffic except response vessels between mile marker 922 and mile marker 939.

The barge had a maximum potential capacity of 1.05mn USG of slurry oil, but two of the partitions aboard the barge were secured, minimizing the amount that could spill, according to the Coast Guard.

Slurry oil is residual oil from a refinery's fluid catalytic cracking (FCC) unit often used as a blending component within heavy fuel oils to meet bunker fuels specifications.

A Coast Guard airplane conducted an over flight today which showed a five-mile discoloration beginning at the impact site. The Coast Guard is working with the barge owner, Inland Marine Services, and SWS, an oil spill response organization, to determine the amount of slurry oil that has been spilled.