China’s largest
reported oil spill emptied beaches along the Yellow Sea as its size
doubled Wednesday, while cleanup efforts included straw mats and
frazzled workers with little more than rubber gloves.

An official warned the spill posed a “severe threat” to sea life
and water quality as China’s latest environmental crisis spread off
the shores of Dalian, once named China’s most livable city.

One cleanup worker has drowned, his body coated in crude.

“I’ve been to a few bays today and discovered they were almost
entirely covered with dark oil,” said Zhong Yu with environmental
group Greenpeace China, who spent the day on a boat inspecting the
spill.

“The oil is half-solid and half liquid and is as sticky as
asphalt,” she told The Associated Press by telephone.

The oil had spread over 165 square miles (430 square kilometers)
of water five days since a pipeline at the busy northeastern port
exploded, hurting oil shipments from part of China’s strategic oil
reserves to the rest of the country. Shipments remained reduced
Wednesday.

State media has said no more oil is leaking into the sea, but
the total amount of oil spilled is not yet clear.

Greenpeace China released photos Wednesday of inky beaches and
of straw mats about 2 square meters (21 square feet) in size
scattered on the sea, meant to absorb the oil.

Fishing in the waters around Dalian has been banned through the
end of August, the state-run Xinhua News Agency reported.

“The oil spill will pose a severe threat to marine animals, and
water quality, and the sea birds,” Huang Yong, deputy bureau chief
for the city’s Maritime Safety Administration, told Dragon TV.

At least one person died during cleanup efforts. A 25-year-old
firefighter, Zhang Liang, drowned Tuesday when a wave threw him
from a vessel, Xinhua reported.

Officials, oil company workers and volunteers were turning out
by the hundreds to clean blackened beaches.

“We don’t have proper oil cleanup materials, so our workers are
wearing rubber gloves and using chopsticks,” an official with the
Jinshitan Golden Beach Administration Committee told the Beijing
Youth Daily newspaper, in apparent exasperation.

“This kind of inefficiency means the oil will keep coming to
shore. … This stretch of oil is really difficult to clean up in
the short term.”

But 40 oil-skimming boats and about 800 fishing boats were also
deployed to clean up the spill, and Xinhua said more than 15
kilometers (9 miles) of oil barriers had been set up to keep the
slick from spreading.

China Central Television earlier reported an estimate of 1,500
tons of oil has spilled. That would amount roughly to 400,000
gallons (1,500,000 liters) - as compared with 94 million to 184
million gallons in the BP oil spill off the U.S. coast.

China’s State Oceanic Administration released the latest size of
the contaminated area in a statement Tuesday.

The cause of the explosion that started the spill was still not
clear. The pipeline is owned by China National Petroleum Corp.,
Asia’s biggest oil and gas producer by volume.

Friday’s images of 100-foot-high (30-meter-high) flames at
China’s second largest port for crude oil imports drew the
immediate attention of President Hu Jintao and other top leaders.
Now the challenge is cleaning up the greasy plume.

“Our priority is to collect the spilled oil within five days to
reduce the possibility of contaminating international waters,”
Dalian’s vice mayor, Dai Yulin, told Xinhua on Tuesday.

But an official with the State Oceanic Administration has warned
the spill will be difficult to clean up even in twice that amount
of time.

Some locals said the area’s economy was already hurting.

“Let’s wait and see how well they deal with the oil until Sept.
1, if the oil can’t be cleaned up by then, the seafood products
will all be ruined,” an unnamed fisherman told Dragon TV. “No one
will buy them in the market because of the smell of the oil.”