At least 200,000 liters of oil I am leaked from the PCK refinery pipeline into Brandenburg (Germany), due to an accident at the Gramzow pipeline station. According to initial investigations, crude oil leaked from a small leak for approximately 2 and a half hours at a pressure of approx 20 barsgoing to create a 25 meter high oil jet.
They immediately rushed to the scene 100 firefighterswho joined the 25 employees of the PCK refinery already present on site: the first information released by the authorities indicates that the loss – equivalent to approx 1,258 barrels – was caused by preparatory work for a safety test to the plant, scheduled for today 11 December. In fact, immediately after the accident, rumors began to spread about a possible sabotagea hypothesis subsequently discarded by PCK itself, which has excluding external causes.
The oil spill mainly affected the village of Zehnebeck, about 3 kilometers from the center of Gramzow, with locals urged to keep their doors and windows closed. Furthermore, Uckermark, the area of the region where the accident occurred, is where the former German prime minister grew up Angela Merkel.
Suction tankers were used to collect the crude oil: at the moment, the reclamation operations are about to be concluded, even if the leak was “largely sealed” around 7.45pm yesterday 10 December, as confirmed by the German press, which quotes the Fire Brigade.
From the point of view of environmental impact, the spokesperson of the Ministry of the Environment, Matthias Brucktalked about a possible environmental disasterannouncing that he «does not yet know the full extent of the damagebut we suspect there are a lot of them important», given that they are small quantity of crude oil they could have ended up in waterways present nearby, and then reach the Welse, a tributary of the Oder river.
The pipeline affected by the accident belongs to PCK refinery – a German branch of Russian oil group Rosneft – and it’s under the protection of the German government from 2022, extending from the port of Rostock, sul Baltic Seaup to Schwedt, in Brandenburg. As reported by ANSA, following the sanctions applied to Russia after the invasion of Ukraine, the plant stopped sourcing Russian oil, receiving supplies via the port of Rostock and that of Gdansk, in Poland.
