Peru halts tanker operations at refinery after spill as suezmax faces seizure

Peruvian officials have put a halt to tanker loadings and unloadings at a Repsol refinery in the country after an oil spill.

The move followed a decision by a court granting a request by prosecutors to seize an Italian tanker involved in the incident near Lima.

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The moves came after a 15 January incident in which waves from the massive volcanic eruption in Tonga led to a spill at a Repsol terminal in Peru, where Fratelli d’Amico Armatori’s 158,319-dwt suezmax tanker Mare Doricum (built 2009) was offloading.

Peruvian officials have not cast blame on the tanker but have instead focused their ire on Repsol.

On Monday, Peru’s Environment Ministry said loading and unloading hydrocarbons at the Spanish oil company’s La Pampilla refinery had been suspended until technical changes were made that would prevent another spill.

Officials are seeking changes to Respol’s contingency plans at the facility.

“There has not been evidence of clear clean-up and remediation actions in the face of the disaster that took place,” environment minister Ruben Ramirez said.

Repsol said the suspension was “disproportionate and unreasonable”, but added that it would be fully available to collaborate with authorities so operations could resume as soon as possible.

Meanwhile, the Public Ministry, as Peru’s justice department is known, announced that its petition to seize the Mare Doricum had been granted.

Due diligence

Flor de Maria Vega Zapata, the national coordinator for Peru’s Special Prosecutor’s Office for Environmental Matters (FEMA), said the agency filed the petition in order to ensure that prosecutors could carry out all due diligence to determine who was responsible for the spill.

The Mare Doricum was offloading a cargo of Brazilian crude at the La Pampilla refinery on 15 January when Captain Giacomo Pisani reported “an abnormal sea swell” that snapped the ship’s moorings. The tanker’s crew halted the cargo operation when they saw an oil sheen, Fratelli d’Amico has said.

The shipowner has said the incident involved a leak from the terminal’s underwater pipeline.

Initially estimated at 6,000 barrels of oil, Peruvian officials now estimate 11,900 barrels were spilled in the incident, although Repsol has put its estimate at less than 10,400 barrels.

The Mare Doricum has been anchored off Lima, where the remainder of its cargo was to be offloaded via a ship-to-ship transfer.

A court has issued an order preventing four of Repsol’s executives from leaving the country for 18 months, and government officials have threatened sanctions against the company.