Chinese authorities have launched an ocean clean-up operation after an oil pipeline explosion and fire spilled 1,500 tonnes of crude into the Yellow Sea, state media reported.
Dozens of oil-skimming vessels and other ships were working to remove the oil from the sea off the northeastern port city of Dalian on Monday following Friday's accident, the Beijing News said.
"By Sunday evening, about 7,000 metres of floating booms had been set up and at least 20 oil skimmers were working to clean the spill," the official China Daily quoted local officials as saying.
Workers hope the oil slick will not spread past the concentrated area of at least 100km offshore.
There are no residents within 3km of the affected site, and little "marine farming", the report added.
Chinese media reports suggested oil had stopped spilling into the sea but the reports did not explicitly say it had been contained, saying that the clean-up would take 10 days.
The clean-up campaign came a day after two pipelines exploded at an oil storage depot belonging to China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC), the country's biggest oil company, near Dalian's Xingang Harbour in the northeast province of Liaoning, triggering a blaze that burned throughout the weekend.
Fire under control
The fire has been brought under control, but some pockets continued to burn on Monday as firefighters sprayed cooling foam on the facility in a bid to extinguish it fully, reports said.
Al Jazeera's Melissa Chan, reporting from the Chinese capital, Beijing, said officials say the damage from the two explosions is serious.
"Hundreds of firefighters have been battling the blaze which started late on Friday," she said.
"Authorities have not given any clues as to the cause of the accident, saying only that a formal investigation has been launched."
The blast happened when a Liberian-flagged tanker was off-loading oil, and CNPC said monitoring of the air and sea environment had been stepped up in the affected areas.
No deaths or injuries have been reported, but state television said oil had contaminated the ocean off the port city in Liaoning province.
The Xingang oil storage site, where the explosion happened, is home to one of the country's first government-held emergency crude stockpiles and a larger commercial crude reserve base built by PetroChina, the listed arm of state owned CNPC.
It is also a transfer spot for two nearby major refineries, Dalian Petrochemical Corp and WEPEC, both operated by PetroChina with a combined crude processing capacity of 600,000 bpd.