Oil slick not from missing flight MH370, says maritime chief
Malaysian authorities have confirmed that the oil slick found about 100 nautical miles off the coast of Kelantan is not from the Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 that went missing early Saturday.
Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency (MMEA) Eastern Region chief First Admiral Datuk Nasir Adam said: "The result of the analysis is negative, the samples are not from MH370.
"The samples are actually from a ship," he told the media today at the MMEA headquarters in Pasir Puteh, Kelantan.
The MMEA had sent samples of an oil slick found yesterday in the South China Sea, about 100 nautical miles (185km) from the Tok Bali Beach, in Kelantan, to the Chemistry Department in Petaling Jaya.
The samples were taken by the agency's vessel, KD Amanah.
MMEA director-general Maritime Admiral Datuk Mohd Amdan Kurish had said that the samples had to be sent to the Chemistry Department in Petaling Jaya because there was no such facilities in Kelantan and Terengganu.
He had said that the two kilometre-long oil slick was yellowish in colour and was different from the ubiquitous oil slick from oil spills of ships.
In the report released at 5pm, the director-general of the Chemistry Department, Ahmad Ridzuan Ibrahim, said the sample was put through three tests.
The first test was to establish if it contained "mineral oil", followed by a test to determine if the sample from the oil slick contained "light oil" or "heavy oil". The final stage, the profiling process, is to check the fuel type (kerosene, diesel or petrol).
The MH370 aircraft which took off from the Kuala Lumpur International Airport at 12.41am on Saturday with 227 passengers and 12 crew, was reported missing while heading to Beijing, China. – March 10, 2014.
