OCP resumed pumping 11 days after the Piedra Fina incident

The oil transport company OCP Ecuador announced that The repair work on the Heavy Crude Oil Pipeline has already been completed and restarted operations. The OCP suffered an accident on January 28 when a rock fell on the exposed infrastructure, in the Piedra Fina sector, and a few days later rocks fell in a place close to the break. In accordance with OCP, although the problem occurred 11 days ago, the pumping stoppage itself would only have been for three days.

is that during the first mishap, in which there was a spill of 6,300 barrels, OCP stopped pumping at the rupture site, but made use of its available pumping and storage capacity in Amazonas (Lago Agrio) to continue receiving the crude. At that time, a delay of two days was calculated in the repair, so the production of Napo crude was not affected.

But nevertheless, after the second event, the downtime was extended and in this new scenario it had to be restricted deliveries of crude until the start of the pipeline. Once pumping restarted yesterday, OCP has informed its users that the reception of crude oil is resuming and it is expected that production will be restored to previous levels in the coming days.

During the stoppage of the OCP there was a drop in production that directly affected Petroecuador’s production, rather than the production of private companies. Thus, the blocks that had the greatest reduction in production were Eden Yutui and ITT, both managed by the state company. For this February 7, the production of Eden Yuturi recovered from 13,900 barrels to 29,000 barrels. Meanwhile, the ITT still remained at 0 barrels.

On the other hand, OCP indicated that the environmental remediation actions and the social compensation are being organized according to the approved plan by the authorities and with all State controls, according to the oil executive.

During this event of force majeure, the transport company has contracted three specialized companies who work with more than 790 people in territory and specialized machinery.

OCP Ecuador has made significant progress in remediation, having collected more than 1,000 cubic meters of earth with traces of crude. In terms of social compensation, he reported that they have already delivered 120,000 liters of water, in tankers, most of them, and food kits that comply with the technical standard of the National Risk and Emergency Management Service. Likewise, medical conferences have begun to address basic health issues in nearby towns.