CHESTER SAM­BRA­NO

The Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed says the clean-up of the Guayagua­yare oil spill is now 60 per cent com­plete.

Her­itage says its In­ci­dent Man­age­ment Team is con­tin­u­ing clean-up and re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion ac­tiv­i­ties at the site of an oil spill in Guayagua­yare that oc­curred on Feb­ru­ary 11.

On Feb­ru­ary 12, in­ves­ti­ga­tions re­vealed a leak on a 10-inch pipeline along Fer­ri­er Road, which af­fect­ed the heav­i­ly forest­ed area and an in­land wa­ter­course.

Her­itage says it im­me­di­ate­ly iso­lat­ed and re­paired the leak and be­gan clean-up and re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion work.

In a state­ment, the com­pa­ny re­vealed a con­trac­tor from the lo­cal com­mu­ni­ty was al­so hired on to pro­vide ad­di­tion­al staffing, and 85 res­i­dents were hired from this en­gage­ment.

It says so far, over 7,000 bar­rels of flu­id com­pris­ing 95% wa­ter and 5% hy­dro­car­bons have been re­moved from five col­lec­tion points along the river­bank and trans­port­ed to the Guayagua­yare Tank Farm.