Navy officials were today battling to clean up an oil spill from an undersea pipeline off the coast of Thailand.

An estimated 128 tons of crude oil poured into the ocean from a leak in the pipe near Rayong province in the east of the country on Tuesday January 22.

The Thai Navy sent a surveillance plane, two ships and a helicopter to help with the clean-up but warned that some of the pollution could hit the area's shores.

Attapol Charoenchansa, the director general of the country's Pollution Control Department of the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, said staff were trying to disperse the spill before it reached the coast.

Owners of the damaged pipeline, the Star Petroleum Refining Public Company, said the leak came from a mooring station about 12 miles southeast of the Map Ta Phut Industrial Estate, south of Bangkok. They claimed it started at around 9pm local time before it was stopped shortly after midnight.