It's been just over a month since at least 54,000 litres of crude oil spilled from a pipeline into the sea off Rayong.
The clean-up operation has been declared completed and the seawater in affected areas has pretty much become clear again.
To the delight of oil giant PTT and the government, the incident - the first major oil spill in Thailand - and its aftermath have now largely faded from the news cycle and public consciousness.
But, of course, not everything can be cleared up quite as neatly as the company and relevant ministers might have wished. Many affected people, including fisherfolk, resort and restaurant operators, seafood sellers, etc, have yet to be duly compensated. And impact assessment of the marine environment will take at least a few years and much more time will be needed to restore its health.
Negotiations between PTT's affiliate PTT Global Chemical (PTTGC) and affected fisherfolk over compensation have so far gone badly.
A recent round of talks focused on the form to be filled in by the fishermen to claim compensation. PTTGC has insisted that the form issued by the provincial authorities be used and refused to accept one drafted by the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), which had provided assistance to the fishermen.
A company negotiator was filmed expressing contempt for the NHRC in a video clip that has been shared on social media. "I don't care for the commissioners. They have no influence on me whatsoever," he said.
To no one's surprise, the talks collapsed.
PTT's strategy for dealing with the oil spill fallout from the very beginning has been to project an image of a responsible corporation. The company announced its willingness to accept responsibility for any damage caused by the spill and even apologised for its mistake. But apparently PTT's statements were only designed to get the incident off the news cycle and away from the public's attention as quickly as possible.
Things had seemed so reasonable; everything had seemed to fall into place nicely. The only hitch was the company's and its government supporters' insistence that everything must be done on their own terms.
PTT has asserted control, insofar as it can, over everything concerning the spill and its aftermath, starting with the dispensation of the "facts" surrounding the spill, to how damage compensation is to be calculated and disbursed, not to mention how the news should or should not be presented to the public.
Now that it has accomplished pretty much what it had set out to do, it can afford to play hardball with any dissenting groups, including fishermen who refuse to accept the compensation offered by the company of 1,000 baht a day for one month, for a total of 30,000 baht in damages, for each complainant.
To many fishermen the PTT offer is totally unacceptable. But they can either accept it or lodge an appeal with the provincial authorities or file a lawsuit. Neither of the alternative options are appealing to them.
Meanwhile, PTT's attempted control of the facts is being challenged by a coalition of civic and environmental groups under the banner of PTT Oil Spill Watch.
Representatives of the group on Tuesday delivered a petition to the government, together with the names of more than 30,000 people who signed the petition, calling for the formation of an independent inquiry panel to look into the cause and impact of the incident.
The action was taken following the release of a report by a fact-finding committee that was appointed by PTT itself and which, not surprisingly, gave PTT and its handling of the spill a clean bill of health.
But the five-person panel and its findings have been met with much public scepticism.
While it is a common practice elsewhere to establish an independent fact-finding mission for similar incidents, the PTT panel was seen as comprising people friendly to the oil giant.
The panel's chairman was Khunying Thongtip Ratanarat, a former director of the Petroleum Institute of Thailand. She is also a sister of Thongchat Hongladarom, the first governor of PTT back when it was a state enterprise.
Another panel member is Qwanruedee Chotichanathawewong, president of the Thailand Environment Institute (TEI). TEI founded and runs the Thailand Business Council for Sustainable Development (TBCSD) with strong backing from PTT.
The TBCSD chairman, Prasert Bunsumpun, is a former PTT president and current president of PTTGC.
It is a widely-held principle that a party committing a mistake should not be allowed to investigate itself. Any findings from such an investigation are obviously dubious.
PTT Oil Spill Watch wants an independent panel in the same manner as the one established by the Australian government to investigate the massive oil spill by PTTEP Australasia (PTTEP AA), another subsidiary of PTT, in the Timor Sea.
In that incident, PTT was fined A$510,000 (14.6 million baht) and required to fund an environmental monitoring programme as part of the clean-up process for up to five years.
The group demands that the independent panel should re-establish the facts surrounding the incident.
How much oil was actually spilled? How much and what type of chemical dispersants were used? How was the clean-up operation conducted?
What was the extent of the damage done to the environment and how should it be restored?
The ball is now in the Pheu Thai Party-led government's court. So far there's no indication how it will react.
Personally, I'm not optimistic. While Pheu Thai and PTT are not synonymous, a number of party stalwarts appear to have put a lot of faith in the oil company for reasons only they know.
Setting up an independent panel now may be regarded as a loss of face and its findings might well have undesirable consequences.
But surely restoring public trust at a time when public trust is a rare commodity must be high on the government's priority list and worth the risk. That is unless PTT as well as the government have something to hide.
Wasant Techawongtham is former News Editor, Bangkok Post. He is currently a freelance writer and editorial director of Milky Way Press, a publishing house.