Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um says it has iden­ti­fied and clamped the leak which spilt thick crude in­to the Ves­signy Riv­er ear­li­er this week.

In a state­ment to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Her­itage al­so said it is main­tain­ing con­tact with res­i­dents and oth­er stake­hold­ers so it can get feed­back on any re­lat­ed con­cerns. 

Her­itage al­so re­tract­ed an ear­li­er state­ment that said it had in­struct­ed Trin­i­ty Brighton Op­er­a­tions to sus­pend pump­ing.

In­stead, Her­itage said Trin­i­ty Brighton Op­er­a­tions was not en­gaged in pump­ing ac­tiv­i­ties at the time of the leak and was there­fore not di­rect­ed or re­quired to sus­pend pump­ing op­er­a­tions. Her­itage apol­o­gised for any in­con­ve­nience caused by this mis­state­ment. 

The com­pa­ny al­so said air qual­i­ty tests in the af­fect­ed area con­tin­ue to read with­in nor­mal lev­els.

The Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries, the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) and oth­er reg­u­la­to­ry bod­ies are be­ing up­dat­ed, as re­quired. Her­itage is es­ti­mat­ing the com­ple­tion of its clean-up ac­tiv­i­ties in three days.

On Tues­day, res­i­dents of Ves­signy Re­serve Road be­gan ex­pe­ri­enc­ing a high smell of hy­dro­car­bons in the area.

By night­fall, some of them had to evac­u­ate their homes af­ter ex­pe­ri­enc­ing bouts of nau­sea, dizzi­ness and di­ar­rhoea.