The top of Mexico’s state-owned oil firm contends oil washing up on the nation’s Gulf coast seashores couldn’t have come from a spill of about 1,350 barrels attributable to a pipeline leak
MEXICO CITY — The top of Mexico’s state-owned oil firm contended Wednesday that oil washing up on the nation’s Gulf coast seashores couldn’t have come from a spill of about 1,350 barrels attributable to a pipeline leak, suggesting it got here from pure seepage from ocean-floor vents.
Octavio Romero, the director of the state-owned Petroleos Mexicanos firm, higher often known as Pemex, mentioned an getting older underwater pipeline sprang a leak firstly of July.
Romero mentioned that as a result of the corporate didn’t have the suitable dimension becoming available to restore the pipe, oil continued leaking for 18 days. The pipeline, positioned simply off Mexico’s southern Gulf coast, was lastly fastened late final week.
Romero argued the kind of gentle crude spilled from the Ek-Balam area all through the primary half of July couldn’t have shaped thick tarry lumps like these reported on seashores within the Gulf coast states of Tabasco and Tamaulipas.
There’s pure underwater seepage from offshore oil fields within the Gulf. Romero mentioned researchers estimate that such seepages quantity to about 380 barrels per day. However he didn’t clarify why the oil seemed to be washing up on seashores in higher quantities after the spill.
He mentioned native media had “distorted” reporting in what he known as their “disproportional” protection of the spill.
The spill was the second accident at Pemex’s offshore amenities within the Gulf this month.
On July 7, an explosion and hearth destroyed an offshore fuel platform. Two employees died, eight have been injured and one was lacking, officers mentioned.
That catastrophe occurred on the corporate’s Nohoch fuel switch platform. It mentioned the lifeless and lacking employees have been employed by a subcontractor and three of the injured have been firm workers and 5 labored for the subcontractor.