Kuwait’s national oil company, “Kuwait Oil Company”, announced a “state of emergency” on Monday after an oil spill.
“A state of emergency has been declared due to an oil leak in the west of the country,” said the “Kuwait Oil Company” in a press release, claiming to have sent teams on site to determine the origin. of the leak and contain it.
The leak took place in an uninhabited area, with no injuries, and “production was not affected,” company spokesman Qusai Alamer said in a statement to the press.
The manager, who did not specify the exact location of the incident, assured that “no toxic fumes were reported on the site”.
The information provided at this stage by the company does not make it possible to determine the extent of the damage to the environment, for his part, maintained the Kuwaiti environmental activist, Khalid Al-Hajire, head of the Greenline organization.
This is a “recurring problem due to (…) non-compliance with safety rules and those of environmental protection”, he regretted, deploring “the lack of firmness in the National Environment Authority with regard to the oil sector”.
“The pollution we constantly see in the air, on land and in the sea proves that the oil industry does not attach enough importance to environmental protection,” Al-Hajire said.
It should be noted that the Kuwait Oil Company, which had reported several oil leaks in recent years, is one of the main crude oil producers in the world. About 90% of its revenue comes from oil.