An examination of the damage to Repsol’s Mar de Ventanilla pipeline, which caused an oil spill into the ocean, found that a manufacturing defect was the cause of the disaster. This was reported on January 7 by La República.
According to the forensic examination, the pipeline was not built in accordance with the 2013 production plans that Repsol submitted to prosecutor Ariel Tapia, who is in charge of investigating the 11,000-barrel oil spill that occurred on January 15, 2021.
“The manufacturing plans issued by Relapasa (Repsol) in 2013 indicated that the nozzles had to be butt welded to the pipe with preparation of V joints to ensure full penetration, which did not happen”says the expert Aldo Valer Morales in a report commissioned by the Superintendence of Repsol.
The malfunction was due to the fact that its parts could not withstand the pressure caused by the sudden movement of the Italian ship Mare Doricum during the discharge of oil on January 15.
“In this state, when tensile and bending loads were applied by the displacement of the ship, the forces generated were directed mainly at the welds, which represented the smallest resistant section of the pipe, causing the destruction of the weld on both nozzles”— specified in the expert’s report.
Let us remember that the oil spill off the coast of Peru, which occurred on January 15, 2022, directly or indirectly affected more than 700,000 people in Peru, caused serious damage to the environment and caused the contamination of several beaches in the country.
Repsol initially attributed the incident to the large waves caused by a volcanic eruption on the island of Tonga, on the other side of the Pacific Ocean. However, the Peruvian government accused the company of committing “terrible environmental disaster that has occurred in Lima in recent times”.
Source: Rossa Primavera
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