The oil transporter OCP reported that it reached 90% of the crude oil cleaning in the first stage of containment initiated after a force majeure event caused the rupture of the oil pipeline in the Piedra Fina area at the end of January.
In the first hours, it managed to reinsert more than 84% of the spilled hydrocarbon into its system, it said in a statement.
“Within a week of the incident, OCP Ecuador has achieved significant progress in environmental remediation and in the first phase of compensation to the communities”, he pointed out.
In the first 72 hours of the force majeure event, “it collected 5,300 barrels, of the 6,300 spills, and reinserted them into the system. We have cleaned a lot of the impacted soil and collected more than 1,000 cubic meters of soil,” said Jorge Vugdelija, executive president of OCP Ecuador.
A pipeline of the OCP suffered a break on January 28 in the sector of the rFine Stone Riverin the Amazonian province of Napo, after the fall of a large rock of more than two meters, causing the oil spill that reached the flow of the Coca River, according to locals.
Last Monday the company announced that it managed to recover all the crude oil that had been dammed in pools and began the remediation of the soil, vegetation and attention to the communities neighboring the area of the mishap, although it recognized that there could be trace contaminants in rivers in the region. .
The Ministry of the Environmentand reported on Monday that the oil spill affected 2.1 hectares, mainly in a protected area.
On Tuesday, OCP reported new damage to the pipeline, close to the pipeline that was affected last Friday, causing an oil spill in the Ecuadorian Amazon.
OCP said it was a “minor event” caused by falling rocks and mud, which will require intervention to get it back up and running safely.
