By IANS
Quito (Ecuador) : Ecuador’s state-run oil company Petroecuador has announced it has contained the oil spill after a mudslide broke a part of the Trans-Ecuadorian pipeline (SOTE) system last week, Spain’s EFE news agency reported Sunday.
The spill of 4,000 barrels of crude has been brought under control in the El Reventador sector, on the road that connects Quito with the Amazon city of Baeza, some 60 km east of the capital, according to a communique from Petroecuador Saturday.
A pipeline of the SOTE system was damaged when heavy downpour across Ecuador last week caused a mudslide in the El Reventador area and covered about 70 metres of the Quito-Baeza highway.
Most of the spilled crude flowed into a swamp, which made containment easier, the communiqué said and added that embankments were set up along the Quijos and Coca rivers – which flow through the Amazon city of Francisco de Orellana – to halt the slicks from flowing further down.
Petroecuador said that its rescue teams have removed some 40,000 cubic metres of the mudslide that buried and cut off the oil pipeline and highway.
The aim of the operation was to find the mouth of the pipeline buried in the mudslide, to join it to a new 80 metres long system that Petroecuador has installed to repair the damaged section.
The SOTE transports some 349,000 barrel of crude a day over a distance of 500 km, connecting the oil fields of the Amazon region with the port of Balao on the Pacific Ocean.
Ecuador’s total oil output is more than 500,000 barrels per day, and revenues from petroleum exports fund at least a third of government spending in the poor Andean nation.