Syrian oil spill advances in Mediterranean

Shocking images of an oil spill in Taiwan 0:55

(CNN) -

An oil spill that originated from Syria's largest refinery is growing and spreading across the Mediterranean Sea and could reach the island of Cyprus on Wednesday, Cypriot authorities said.

Syrian officials said last week that a tank full of 15,000 tons of fuel had been leaking since Aug. 23 at a thermal power plant in the Syrian coastal city of Baniyas.

They said they had been able to control it.

Analysis of satellite imagery by Orbital EOS now indicates that the oil spill was larger than originally thought, covering around 800 square kilometers (309 square miles), an area roughly the same size as New York City. .

The company told CNN late Tuesday that the oil slick occurred about 7 kilometers (4 miles) off the Cypriot coast.

In this satellite image from Planet Labs Inc., an oil spill is seen extending off the coast near Baniyas, Syria, on August 24, 2021.

The Cyprus Department of Fisheries and Marine Research said that, based on a simulation of the movements of the oil spill and meteorological data, the slick could reach Cape Apostlos Andreas "within the next 24 hours".

The department released the statement around 11 a.m. local time (4 a.m. ET) on Tuesday.

He also said he would be willing to help address the spill.

Cape Apostlos Andreas is in the north of the divided island, controlled by Turkey, and lies just over 130 kilometers (more than 80 miles) west of Baniyas in Syria.

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Photos that circulated on social media for more than a week have shown the oil slick along the coastal areas of Baniyas and Jableh in Syria, and locals have warned of a possible threat to marine life.

A Baniyas resident, who spoke to CNN on condition of anonymity, said much of the shoreline had been polluted.

"People did not need this, it is already difficult to earn a living here and this certainly affected the lives of many families and made them lose their income," said the resident.

"The government only sent teams with sponges and water hoses, they don't have the capacity to deal with this ... you can't clean the sea with sponges," added the neighbor.

Turkey, which shares a border and coast with Syria, has also been called upon to contain the spill.

"We are taking the necessary measures by mobilizing our resources to stop any possibility of the spill becoming an environmental disaster," Turkish Vice President Fuat Oktay told the state-run Anadolu news agency.

The Baniyas refinery is the main source of Syrian fuel products and is essential to maintaining power in the war-torn country.

This is the second major oil spill in the eastern Mediterranean this year.

In February, an oil spill off the coast of Israel devastated the country's beaches and left tar deposits on the Lebanese coast.

Beaches closed due to ecological disaster on Israel's coast 0:50

Oil Spill