A tug pushing two barges collided with an oil tanker in the Houston Ship Channel, causing one barge to capsize and the other is damaged, the U.S. Coast Guard said in a statement. The barges were transporting gasoline blend stock Reformate, which is leaking into the water, officials said. There are no reported injuries at this time. An estimated 25,000 tons of gasoline stock were on each barge and an unknown amount had been released, the Coast Guard said. A helicopter aircrew and a boat crew were both deployed to assess the situation. A Port Houston Fire Department fireboat plus oil spill response, air monitoring and salvage personnel are responding, the Coast Guard said. The city of Seabrook acknowledged a strong smell coming from the collision, but said it is "not getting any reports that the air quality is impacted. Residents do not need to take any action at this time," CBS Houston affiliate KHOU-TV reports. The Coast Guard said air monitoring is being conducted. Galveston County officials warned that if anyone smelled gasoline, they should stay indoors and avoid the coastline, KHOU-TV reports.<doc-sep>Much of the Houston Ship Channel remained closed Saturday a day after two vessels collided, causing a large gasoline blend spill and setting off another round of environmentalists concerns for the Gulf Coast. The 755-foot tanker Genesis River carrying liquefied natural gas collided Friday afternoon with a tug boat pushing two barges, each carrying 25,000 barrels of product, around 3:30 p.m., the U.S. Coast Guard said. One barge capsized and the other was damaged, leaking a gasoline product called reformate. The channel closure is the first unplanned shutdown since March, when a massive chemical storage tank fire at Intercontinental Terminals Co., in Deer Park spilled petroleum products into nearby waterways. That three-day closure cost the energy industry about $1 billion, experts estimated. The National Weather Service warned residents as far west as Pearland they may be able to smell gasoline fumes, with the most pungent odors in Webster and La Porte. Galveston County health officials are conducting air monitoring and have yet to discover any hazardous levels of chemicals. Jim Guidry, executive vice president of Kirby Inland Marine, owner of the barges, said at a news conference Saturday morning the tanker’s hull punctured two of the smaller vessel’s four storage tanks. “The bow of the ship went through the port tank into the starboard tank, so there was no way to secure the source of the leak,” Guidry said. “Those two tanks were open to the sea.” Aerial footage showed a trianglular gash in one of the barges and a sheen floating on the water. The white bow of the Genesis River bore scrape marks. The capsized barge is intact and not believed to be leaking product, Kirby Corporation spokesman Greg Beuerman said. The tug, which had four crew aboard, was undamaged. The Coast Guard has yet to determine to the cause of the collision. Chief Joergens Reno said crews are attempting to calculate how much product spilled into the water. The channel remains closed between Bayport and Redfish Island, halting 29 inbound and 17 outbound ships. “Our assets are out there right now, still assessing the situation, still trying to come up with a game plan,” Reno said. “We would love to get some traffic moving.” Crews have deployed 3,800 feet of boom around the barges to contain the spill. More than 12,000 feet of additional boom is being deployed to protect sensitive areas around the bay, the Coast Guard said. There have been no reported impacts to wildlife. Beuerman said the barge company estimates about 9,000 barrels have spilled. He said once crews determine how to salvage the damaged barge and flip the capsized one, the Coast Guard will be able to estimate when the ship channel can reopen. An online vessel registry lists the Genesis River as a Panama-flagged vessel built in 2018 that most recently made a port call in Houston on Friday. It was bound for Port Said, Egypt on May 29. Many shipping firms register vessels in Panama, as the Central American company has less onerous fees and regulations than other countries. All foreign-flagged vessels are required to use a pilot to navigate the Houston Ship Channel. Houston Pilots spokesman Henry de la Garza said a pilot was aboard the Genesis River but declined to comment on the collision, citing the ongoing investigation. Kirby Inland Marine operates about one-quarter of the 4,000 barges in the United States and has a heavy presence in the ship channel. A Kirby-owned barge collided with another barge near the mouth of the channel in 2014, igniting a fire. Several months earlier, a tanker and bulk carrier collided overnight off Morgan’s Point, near the site of Friday’s collision. That crash forced the closure of the ship channel and dumped aroud 88,000 gallons of fuel into the waterway. zach.despart@chron.com www.twitter.com/zachdespart<doc-sep>The Houston Ship Channel reopened Sunday as crews continued to clean up the scene of a collision Friday between two vessels, which spilled an estimated 9,000 barrels of gasoline blend into the busy waterway. Deep draft ships can now enter and exit the channel, although only while under tow so as to minimize their wakes as salvage operations are conducted, Unified Command officials said at a news conference. The channel was closed after the 755-foot tanker Genesis River, which was carrying liquefied natural gas, collided Friday afternoon with a tug boat pushing two barges. One barge capsized and the other was damaged, leaking a gasoline product called reformate, a highly flammable chemical that's mixed with gasoline and is dangerous to marine life. The man-made, 50-mile channel is one of the busiest ports in the world, and even short closures can carry a hefty price tag for companies that have to delay or re-route shipments. Cleanup efforts continued over the weekend. Officials estimated it will take up to two days to remove the fuel from the cargo tanks of the vessels involved in the collision. The removal has been complicated by the fact that the capsized barge is floating upside down. Because normal cargo access is underwater, a crew will have to cut through the barge's steel hull to remove its hazardous cargo. Jim Guidry, executive vice president of Kirby Inland Marine, which owns the barges, said they currently have almost 400 people working to mitigate impacts and clean up the spill. The Texas Department of State Health Services has halted oyster harvesting in Galveston Bay and advises against eating fish caught north of the line between Texas City Dike and Smith Point. Already, there have been reported wildlife deaths in the vicinity. "We have received some reports of wildlife impacts," said Craig Kartye of the Texas General Land Office's oil spill prevention program. "Specifically two dead seagulls located near the source of the incident, one dead raccoon in the city of Kemah and some dead fish at one spot along the west shoreline of Galveston Bay." He said wildlife rehabilitation teams were responding to the reports. Despite that, he said, the water is not dangerous for humans, which is why they've opted to re-open the channel. Crews deployed 3,800 feet of boom around the barges to contain the spill; more than 12,000 feet of additional boom was being deployed to protect sensitive areas around the bay. "We've collected 2,700 samples, none of which exceeded the established action levels," he said. Officials are still investigating the cause of the collision. Capt. Kevin Oditt of the Coast Guard said a team had retrieved voice recordings and data from the vessels and was in the process of collecting statements. He declined to offer specifics on what he said is an ongoing investigation into the spill, but said that the National Transportation Safety Board will also investigate. It's not the first investigation into crashes on the 530-foot-wide channel. In March 2014, a collision closed the channel and caused a spill of 168,000 gallons of bunker fuel oil. In March 2015, roughly 88,000 gallons of a hazardous additive to gasoline spilled into the channel after another collision. It was the fifth accident investigated by NTSB in as many years, and prompted the agency's chairman to urge officials to adopt better safety procedures along the channel. Authorities monitoring the air reported finding one detectable concentration of a volatile organic compound, but said it did not show up in subsequent tests, the Associated Press reported. Residents near the scene had reported a strong smell of gasoline. Chambers County officials said in a statement Sunday morning that "environmental monitoring stations are in place, and at this time impacts are not being detected within the county." Guidry said he hopes his company will learn from the spill. "We're always concerned about incidents like this, and I think the whole industry works together to prevent them," he said. "We'll all learn from this incident and make the Ship Channel safer." The closure was the first since March, when a massive chemical storage tank fire broke out at Intercontinental Terminals Co. in Deer Park. Petroleum products spilled into nearby waterways during that environmental disaster. That three-day closure cost the energy industry about $1 billion, experts estimated. The Harris County District Attorney's Office has since filed five environmental charges against ITC, accusing the company of "criminal levels" of contamination. ITC responded initially that although it had not seen the charges, "there is no question that there was a large fire and an enormous effort to extinguish it which resulted in a discharge into Tucker Bayou." Maria Burns, director of the University of Houston's logistics and transportation program, estimated at the time that closing the channel for a few days typically costs about $500 million in delayed shipments and lost materials for the thousands of companies that use the channel. She said it could cost another $500 million in indirect costs. rebecca.schuetz@chron.com robert.downen@chron.com<doc-sep>HOUSTON (Reuters) - One barge was severely damaged and another capsized following a collision with a 755-foot (230-m) tanker in the Houston Ship Channel near Bayport, Texas, that spilled about 9,000 barrels of gasoline into the waterway, officials said. No injuries were reported. Salvage teams were at the site on Saturday, U.S. Coast Guard officials said. It was the second spill in two months to affect traffic on the 53-mile (85-km) commercial waterway that connects Houston to the Gulf of Mexico. Nine U.S. oil refineries that process 12 percent of the national total operate along the ship channel. Air monitoring systems have detected no “above actionable levels” of pollution, said Bayport Channel Collision Response, a group of federal, state and shipping officials organized to clear the wreckage and deal with the spill. Emergency responders placed more than 3,800 feet of floating boom lines as of Saturday morning and were planning to lay another 12,150 feet around the barges and sensitive areas along the nearby bay, the group said. There were 33 vessels waiting to move inbound and 27 waiting to exit on Saturday afternoon, the group said Saturday afternoon, with 91 vessels at anchor. The collision, between tanker Genesis River and a Kirby Inland Marine tug towing two barges, halted all traffic between lights 61 and 75, the U.S. Coast Guard said. It reopened a portion of the channel to one-way traffic between light 66 and 67 on Saturday afternoon. A safety zone also was set up that expanded shipping restrictions to light 66 and up to but not including the Bayport Ship Channel, officials said. Each of the two barges were carrying about 25,000 barrels of a gasoline blend stock called reformate. In March, a fire at a petrochemical tank farm along the waterway burned for days, sending black smoke into the air and spilling fuel and solvent into the channel, disrupting ship traffic for weeks. Hundreds of people reported respiratory and other ailments at clinics set up to provide medical aid after the fire. (This story corrects volume of gasoline to barrels from gallons in paragraphs 1 and 9.)<doc-sep>
(CNN) — Ship and barge traffic is resuming in the Houston Ship Channel as cleanup efforts continue in the aftermath of a spill that sent thousands of barrels of gasoline blending product into the channel, officials said Sunday. The spill came after a collision in the channel Friday between a 755-foot oil tanker and a tug pushing two barges. The impact capsized one barge, damaged the other and triggered the leak of gasoline blending stock that the barges were carrying, the US Coast Guard said. The barges – pushed by the towing vessel Voyager – were loaded with the gasoline blending component reformate, which leaked into the water after the collision near Bayport, Texas, officials said. About 9,000 barrels of reformate spilled into the channel, according to incident commander Jim Guidry, an executive with Kirby Inland Marine, owner and operator of the Voyager. There were no reported injuries during the collision with the tanker, the Genesis River. An estimated 25,000 barrels of gasoline blend stock were loaded on each barge, a Coast Guard statement said. Here is an estimate of where the gasoline-like odor from the barge collision may reach overnight (Midnight to 6 am). The stronger order will be mainly east of I-45 from near Webster to Bayport. pic.twitter.com/iElSvH0LDj — NWS Houston (@NWSHouston) May 11, 2019 Federal, state and local agencies are involved in the cleanup and environmental monitoring. A statement from those agencies Sunday said that the damaged barges have been secured and efforts were underway to remove cargo from the barges. “Work is expected to continue throughout the day with an established priority of ensuring the protection of (Galveston) Bay from the additional release of product,” the statement said. Officials at a news conference Sunday said some 2,700 air monitoring samples from the area had been taken and none of them exceeded “established action levels,” meaning they don’t pose a health risk at this point. Water quality testing is being done along the bay, the statement said. CNN’s Hollie Silverman, Ray Sanchez and Shawn Nottingham contributed to this report.