Germany’s Kiel Canal was scheduled to reopen for shipping at midday (1100 GMT) on Tuesday after a major oil spillage was contained. “The clean-up work in Brunsbüttel has progressed well,” Tobias Goldschmidt, environment minister for the northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein, said on Monday, referring to the town at the western entrance of the canal. According to his statement, a spreading of the oil into the river Elbe and the North Sea, which would have caused an environmental catastrophe, was successfully prevented. The canal was closed on December 21 after a leak in a pipeline caused …