By Glenroy Sinclair, Staff Reporter
An employee of the state-owned oil refinery, Petrojam, mopping up oil at the Texaco pier, Harbour Head, eastern Kingston, yesterday. - Rudolph Brown/Staff Photographer
HUNDREDS OF gallons of crude oil seeped into the sea on Saturday afternoon near the Texaco Pier, at Harbour Head, east Kingston, following a spill at the nearby Texaco plant.
Up to late yesterday evening specialists from Petrojam, the state-owned refinery, who have been hired by Texaco, were mopping up the spill. According to one of the specialists, the clean-up was expected to continue up to this afternoon.
The specialists used a large petroleum tanker-truck to store the "heavy fuel oil" after extracting it from the sea.
"We are still investigating what happened," Garfield Guy, Texaco's operations manager, told The Gleaner.
Mr. Guy said the spill was discovered on Saturday afternoon while several trucks were being loaded on the land side of the terminal. He said that immediately, after learning about the spill, they made "every effort" to contain it and prevent any significant damage or threat to marine life.
"I then reported the matter to the Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management," he said. The matter was reported, also, to the Jamaica Defence Force Coast Guard.
At daybreak yesterday, the specialists resumed the mopping up, but it was still unclear what had caused the spill.
Oil specialists say the spill might have been caused by a ruptured pipeline at the Texaco plant. The fuel apparently then flowed through a drainage outlet at the plant and into the sea.
When a Gleaner news team visited the scene yesterday, the flow of oil from the drainage had stopped, but the waterfront and other areas near the Texaco pier were full of thick oil.
