The oil transport company OCP Ecuador reported this Saturday that it reached 90% of the crude oil cleaning in the first stage of containment that began after a force majeure event caused the rupture at the end of January of the oil pipeline in the Piedra Fina area.
In the first hours, it managed to reinsert more than 84% of the spilled hydrocarbon into its system, it said in a statement.
“In less than a week after the incident, OCP Ecuador has made significant progress in environmental remediation and in the first phase of compensation to the communities,” he said.
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.
An OCP pipeline suffered a break on January 28 in the Piedra Fina river sector, in the Amazonian province of Napo, after the fall of a large rock of more than two meters, causing the spill of crude oil that reached the flow of the river Coca, 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 Environment, Water and Ecological Transition of Ecuador 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.