Pertamina Says Oil Spill All Mopped Up as Police Probe Negligence Angle

Jakarta Globe, July 09, 2010, Candra Malik,Arientha Primanita& Fidelis E Satriastanti

State oil and gas company Pertamina has succeeded in siphoning almost all of the crude oil that spilled into a river in Blora, Central Java, following a leak at its local fuel depot, an executive said on Thursday.

The leak, which police say might have been caused by negligence on the part of an officer on duty at the depot, on Wednesday sent thousands of liters of crude into the nearby Ledok River, covering it for kilometers in a thick layer of oil.

Fires, the causes of which were not yet known, also broke out on the surface, but the main blazes have already been extinguished, officials say.

Basuki Trikora Putra, Pertamina vice president of corporate communications, confirmed the oil spill and said that the company had carried out the necessary cleanup actions.

“We’ve managed to extract almost 95 percent of the spilled oil using a pump,” Basuki said.

“There were fires [at the site] for a while but we’ve managed to douse most of them.

“We’ll conduct an audit to see whether there are any external and internal causes for the accident, besides technical issues,” he said, adding the company had not yet calculated its losses.

On Thursday, some areas of the river still spewed thick smoke, a local policeman said, but the smoke did not prevent several residents from nearby settlements from trying to scoop the oil from the surface for use at home.

Some residents told reporters there that they planned to use the oil as fuel for cooking.

Blora Police Chief Adj. Comr. Isnaini Ujiarto told the Jakarta Globe that police were helping Pertamina officials from the depot to “localize this incident.”

“Fortunately, the depot is in the middle of a teak forest, far from any settlement, so to date there have been no reports of casualties,” Isnaini said.

Pertamina has contained the spill on the surface of the river and used oil pumps to siphon the crude into tankers, he said.

He added that an inspection of the storage facilities in the depot showed that although the fuel tanks were old and rusted, dating back to the Dutch colonial era, there was no sign of a leak.

Police, he said, suspect negligence on the part of an employee at the depot, who might have forgotten to close down a valve on time, causing the crude oil to flow into the river.

Police are questioning workers at the depot but have yet to name a suspect, he said.

As a precaution, police have closed access to the river from the three villages closest to the location of the spill — Ledok, Gagahan and Pojok Watu — to prevent people from scooping up the fuel, Isnaini said.

Berry Nahdian Furqon, executive director of the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi), urged the directors of Pertamina to evaluate their management and technology, pointing out that similar accidents had hit the company in the past.

“This is not the first time that there’s been a leak, so there should be a thorough investigation of the officials, and the directors of Pertamina should take full responsibility,” Berry said, adding that the incident showed how safety issues in the oil and gas industry were often ignored.

Pertamina should also be responsible for all costs stemming from the incident, including cleaning up the river, repairing other environmental damage and compensating villagers affected by the oil spill, he said.

Under the 2009 Environmental Protection and Management Law, heavy penalties can be imposed on corporations or institutions found to have caused environmental pollution.

Imam Hendargo, a senior official at the State Ministry for the Environment, said a team from the district environmental office had been dispatched to the site to investigate the leak and assess the damage.

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