The fire burned for fifteen hours. On a July day in 2010, a desulfurization process in a crude oil pipeline at Xingang Harbour triggered an explosion that ruptured two pipelines running to a China National Petroleum Corporation storage depot. A 90,000-ton storage tank collapsed in the blaze, and oil poured into the Yellow Sea. Within a week, the slick covered 430 square kilometers. By July 21, it had spread to 946 square kilometers and stretched 90 kilometers along the Dalian coastline. The official figure was 1,500 tonnes of spilled oil. Experts suspected the true amount was many times larger.
The chain of events began with the injection of a highly oxidizing sulfur-reducing agent into a pipeline at the port. The resulting fire engulfed the storage facility and collapsed a massive tank. According to a Greenpeace report released weeks later, oil from nearby tanks was intentionally released to prevent the fire from spreading toward a tank containing dimethylbenzene, a volatile and flammable chemical whose ignition could have produced an even larger catastrophe. The deliberate release of oil to prevent a worse explosion underscores the impossible choices the disaster forced: sacrifice the sea to save the port, or risk losing both. The fire's fifteen-hour duration gave the spill time to expand far beyond any initial containment.
The cleanup that followed relied on methods that would have been recognizable a century earlier. Containment booms ringed the worst of the slick, but much of the recovery work fell to fleets of fishermen who scooped oil from the water by hand, transferring it to barrels for storage and disposal. Straw mats were deployed to absorb crude from the surface. Limited chemical dispersants and biodegradation agents supplemented the effort, but the scale of the spill overwhelmed any sophisticated response. Photographs of oil-blackened workers hauling buckets of crude from the Yellow Sea won a World Press Photo award for photographer Lu Guang, images that captured both the environmental devastation and the human cost of cleaning it up.
Chinese government officials initially reported that 1,500 tonnes of oil had been spilled. A Dalian government spokesperson pushed back against this estimate, referencing an expert panel that was still assessing the true scale. The spokesperson acknowledged the panel's conclusion might show the actual volume to be far larger, potentially exceeding 60,000 tons. On July 26, local authorities announced the spill had been contained and had not reached open waters, a claim contradicted by the 90-kilometer coastal spread already documented. Beaches were closed. Tourism collapsed. Aquaculture operations along the coast suffered extensive damage. The gap between official statements and observable reality became a story in itself.
The disaster's cultural afterlife proved as significant as its environmental impact. Author Bao'erji Yuanye wrote a nonfiction account titled The Deepest Water Is Tears, documenting the firefighters and cleanup workers who confronted the blaze and its aftermath. The book was adapted into the 2019 film The Bravest, which brought the story of Xingang Harbour to a national audience and earned over 1.5 billion yuan at the Chinese box office. For the fishermen who spent weeks pulling oil from the sea, and the communities whose beaches and livelihoods were blackened, the spill was not a movie but a turning point. The wildlife areas, aquaculture beds, and coastal economies that were damaged in July 2010 faced years of recovery, a timeline that unfolded long after the cameras and the containment booms were gone.
Located at 38.92N, 121.63E at Xingang Harbour in Dalian, Liaoning Province. The port and oil storage facilities are visible from altitude along the eastern coast of the Dalian urban area. The oil spill spread south and east into the Yellow Sea, covering up to 946 square kilometers. Nearest major airport is Dalian Zhoushuizi International (ZYTL/DLC), approximately 15 km to the west.