Oil slicks lapped the side of the Sydney Opera House yesterday and stretched under Sydney Harbour Bridge after a tanker leaked 80,000 litres of light crude oil.
"I think it is the largest oil spill we have had in 10 to 20 years," said Mr Mathew Taylor, chief executive of the New South Wales Waterways Authority, which manages Sydney Harbour.
The 96,000-tonne Italian tanker Laura D'Amato, chartered by a unit of Royal Dutch/Shell, began leaking light crude oil as it was discharging on Tuesday evening at the Shell Australia refinery in Gore Cove, just west of Sydney Harbour Bridge. The ship's owners, Fratelli D'Amato SpA, said that the spill had been caused by an open valve on the ship and that the company and its insurers accepted responsibility for the accident and the clean-up.
The bulk of the oil was contained behind booms in Gore Cove due to a favourable incoming tide at the time of the spill.
Pungent oil fumes forced the Sydney Opera House production of La Boheme across the harbour to be stopped just before its dramatic finale, and another theatre nearby to be evacuated mid-film on Tuesday night. "The smell was permeating the theatre through the air conditioning and was particularly bad in the orchestra pit," a spokeswoman said.
About 600 local residents contacted emergency services overnight complaining of the pungent smell of oil.
Emergency services said the oil clean-up could take two to three days, but environmentalists said the oil could have longer-term damaging effects on the harbour's eco-system.