Chinese authorities disagree, saying the oil they spotted was of the fuel variety, and not crude from the area oil field run by American company ConocoPhillips. On March 19, fishermen discovered large oil slicks near Shandong, possibly driven by high winds from the previous night. They have also discovered oil absorbing pads abandoned around the region, stained with oil. Fishermen also claim to have seen a ConocoPhillips. Those claims were disputed last Friday however by China’s State Oceanic Administration (SOA). They said tests conducted on oil found in the area confirmed it to be fuel oil, and not crude. ConocoPhillips also denied in a statement that it ran any cleanup operations on March 20 or that any of their oil fields have had spills. An attorney for the fishermen, Jia Fangyi, says it was undoubtedly crude oil, and that authorities are now trying to cover up the evidence by burning the oil, which they did last Friday. "Fishers found their fishing nets and some oil-absorbing pads stained with oil," Jia told the Global Times. "Large stains made of fine particles of oil were spotted on the shore. Dead, blackened fish were found in the water. It's not fuel oil, which just floats on the sea surface." It wouldn’t be the first time In June 2011, Conoco’s Penglai 19-3 oil field in Bohai Bay suffered two separate and unrelated incidents that resulted in 723 barrels of oil leaking into the sea, at one point seriously degrading the water in an 840 square kilometre radius around the leak. News of the oil spill was withheld by the SOA and not reported for a month. Once released, their report blamed Conoco for the spill and fined them $32,000. Conoco eventually reached a settlement with the Ministry of Agriculture of $160 million to cover the fishermen’s losses. The site was shut down for more than a year following those spills to undergo modifications. It reopened in February of this year. (gbtimes.com, Edited by Topco)