Brandenburg’s state Environment Ministry warned of a “large oil spill” after a pipeline accident. It said that emergency services were on site and that details on the size and cause of the spill were not yet available.
State authorities in Brandenburg reported a major oil spill north of Berlin late on Wednesday, saying there had been an accident affecting a pipeline connecting a major oil refinery to the Baltic Sea port of Rostock.
“An accident occurred on the PCK piepline near Gramzow/Zehnebeck, resulting in a large oil spill,” a spokesman for Brandenburg’s Environment Ministry said. “Emergency services are on site. No information can be provided at this time about the cause of the exact extent of the damage.”
The fire department later estimated that roughly 200,000 liters (about 52,835 gallons) of oil had escaped from the pipeline at a pumping station in Gramzow. For orientation, that amount of liquid would fill a little less than one-tenth of an Olympic swimming pool.
Alexander Trenn of the Schwedt fire department said the leak had a pressure of around 20 bar (roughly 290 psi) at its peak, causing a fountain of oil several meters high to spew out.
Specialist machinery was being used to remove the spilled oil. Clean-up operations would continue into Thursday morning, he said. Trenn said around 100 fire department officers and some 25 company employees were working on site.
Nature reserves situated near PCK’s Schwedt refinery on Polish border
A major oil refinery is located near the border to Poland in Schwedt, operated by PCK. The company says on its website that the facility can process 11.5 million metric tons of oil a year, “making it one of the largest crude oil processing sites in Germany.”
Meanwhile, the AFP news agency cited a PCK spokeswoman as saying that “deliberate external influence” such as sabotage could already be “ruled out.”
Local public broadcaster rbb reported that by 19:45 local time (1845 UTC/GMT), “the leak was for the most part plugged, although some oil was still leaking out.”
Source :https://www.dw.com/en/crude-oil-shoots-from-damaged-pipeline-in-eastern-germany/a-75098388
