Subject: VN mercury
The Nation
Friday, Sept 13, 1996
TOXINS FOUND IN VN OFFSHORE GAS FIELD
JAMES FAHN
HO CHI MINH CITY -- THE natural gas in Vietnam's Lan
Tay offshore field
has been found to contain mercury, according to the
company seeking to
develop the area.
Mercury, a dangerous neurotoxin, and other hazardous
substances -
including low-level radioactive material - have also
turned up in gas
fields in Malaysia and Indonesia, industrial sources
say.
As with Vietnam, however, the environmental impact
in these areas
remains unclear.
British Petroleum (BP), which is currently negotiating
a gas sales
agreement with the Vietnamese government for the Lan
Tay field,
reported yesterday that the gas there contains ''extremely
small
amounts of mercury".
Barry Bidston, head of public relations for BP Exploration
in Vietnam
said that delays in negotiating the agreement make
it unlikely that
any commercial development of the field will occur
before 1999.
''We have a very stringent health, safety and environment
programme
and see ourselves in the forefront of pollution control,"
he said.
The Lan Tay field is located 400 kilometres off the
southeastern coast
of Vietnam in the South China Sea.
The only gas being produced in Vietnam currently is
at the offshore
Bach Ho field, where Vietsov Petro a Russian-Vietnamese
joint-venture firm is producing a small amount
of gas along with its
larger oil production operations.
Dr Nguyen Duc Huynh of Petro Vietnam claimed there
were no pollution
problems at the site.
Australia-based BHP is also producing oil at Vietnam's
offshore Dai
Hung Field in a production sharing arrangement with
Petro Vietnam.
The operation is discharging toxic substances such
as barium, copper
and zinc into the sea, but within government-mandated
standards, a
well-placed source who asked not to be named said.
The levels of heavy metals in fish around the platforms
at Dai Hung
were also under the set health standards, the source
said.
Vietnam has also awarded a gas exploration concession
to Unocal in the
Gulf of Thailand, not far from Unocal's Thai operations.
Both Unocal and Total Thailand's other gas concessionaire
have
reported discharging mercury from their operations
into the sea,
raising concern over the mercury levels in fish in
the Gulf.
The mercury is discharged in the produced water as
it is pumped up
from underground along with the gas.
Meanwhile, in Malaysia, there is a small amount of
mercury in the gas
being produced off Terrenganu state, but there is none
in the produced
water and so the metal is not being discharged into
the sea, said Ir
Hussein Rahmat of the Malaysian oil firm Petronas.
Rahmat, who was in Vietnam attending a conference on
regulating
pollution from the oil and gas industry, added that
the gas in
Malaysia also contains naturally-occurring radioactive
materials
(NORMs).
Petronas' low-level radioactive sludge is stored in
a gas processing
plant in Terrenganu state, he said.
Sources at Total and Unocal both of which have
operations in
Indonesia say the gas in some fields there contains
both mercury and
NORMs.
But Indonesian officials at the conference yesterday
said they knew
nothing about it.
In Burma, where two major gas fields have been found
in the Gulf of
Martaban, there have so far been no reports of toxic
contaminants,
both industry representatives and a government official
said.
Finally, Cambodia has awarded several exploratory concessions
for
offshore areas in the Gulf of Thailand. But so far
no petroleum has
been found.