Sascha Wil­son

An oil spill in Bar­rack­pore caused by a bust­ed line re­sult­ed in the spillage of three bar­rels of oil on a por­tion of land and in­to a wa­ter­course.

The dis­cov­ery was made on Sat­ur­day and on Sun­day mop-up op­er­a­tions con­tin­ued at the site near Wil­son Road.

In a state­ment, Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um stat­ed that the com­pa­ny re­ceived re­ports of the spill around 1 pm on Sat­ur­day.

"Up­on in­ves­ti­ga­tion, it was quick­ly dis­cov­ered that the spill was em­a­nat­ing from a 4” pump line. The leak was iso­lat­ed and clamped by 3:00 PM on the same day. Her­itage has es­ti­mat­ed that ap­prox­i­mate­ly three (3) bar­rels of oil was spilled."

The com­pa­ny stat­ed that it en­gaged the ser­vices of a con­trac­tor to clean up the spill and booms have since been re­in­forced along near­by wa­ter­cours­es to re­strict mi­gra­tion of spillage to fur­ther down­stream.

In ad­di­tion, com­pa­ny of­fi­cials al­so vis­it­ed the own­er of near­by agri­cul­ture lands which may have been im­pact­ed and the par­ties will con­tin­ue dis­cus­sions on Mon­day. The com­pa­ny has since in­formed the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries of the in­ci­dent and will keep of­fi­cials ap­praised of re­lat­ed con­tain­ment and re­cov­ery. Bar­rack­pore West coun­cil­lor Nicholas Kan­hai said he vis­it­ed the site and ob­served that clean up op­er­a­tions were be­ing un­der­tak­en. He said work­ers were able to con­tain the oil in the riv­er from go­ing down­stream. He said the spill oc­curred in an un­pop­u­lat­ed area and he has re­ceived no re­ports of dam­age to agri­cul­ture pro­duce or harm to an­i­mals.