Oil spill off storm-battered New York, clean-up underway-report

Men dispose of shopping carts full of food damaged by Storm Sandy at the Fairway supermarket in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn in New York, Wednesday, Oct. 31, 2012. The food was contaminated by flood waters that rose to approximately four feet in the store during the storm. AP

NEW YORK — Clean-up efforts were under way early Thursday after some 300,000 gallons of diesel fuel spilled into the waters off New York City in the aftermath of superstorm Sandy, CNN reported.The spill was caused by a rupture in a storage tank at a nearby New Jersey refinery run by Motiva, part-owned by oil giant Shell, it said.

The US Coast Guard was overseeing the cleanup effort, which involved around 100 workers helping to place containment booms around the spill, CNN said.

Neither the Coast Guard nor Shell was immediately available for comment.

The massive cyclone carved a path of devastation across the US northeast on Monday and Tuesday, flooding lower Manhattan and much of the New Jersey coastline and leaving millions without electricity across several states.