Peru declares ‘emergency’ on coastal area affected by oil spill

  • Date: 23-Jan-2022
  • Source: Gulf Times
  • Sector:Oil & Gas
  • Country:Gulf
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Peru declares ‘emergency’ on coastal area affected by oil spill



AFP/Reuters/ Ancon, Peru

Peru has declared an “environmental emergency” along a stretch of coast hit by an oil spill caused by freak waves from a volcanic eruption in the South Pacific.

With the 90-day decree, the government said it plans “sustainable management” of 21 beaches tarred by 6,000 barrels of oil that spilled from a tanker ship unloading at a refinery last Saturday.

Meanwhile, at Miramar Beach in Peru’s popular resort of Ancon, there are no bathers despite the summer heat.

Instead, it teems with workers in coveralls cleaning up an oil spill.

Almost 1mn litres (264,000 gallons) of crude spilled into the sea when a tanker was hit by waves while offloading at La Pampilla refinery in Ventanilla, 30km (19 miles) north of Lima.

Its owner, Spanish oil company Repsol, attributed the accident to the swell caused by the volcanic eruption in Tonga, thousands of miles away.

“Oil reaches the beach during high tide at night ... and deposits the oil on the shore,” Martin Martinez of the non-governmental organisation (NGO) AMAAC Peru, supervising the clean-up, told AFP.

“We take advantage to remove it from the sea, that and the saturated sand,” he said.

The spill has dealt a blow to tourism in the popular