BRASILIA, (Reuters) – Brazil’s state-owned oil company Petrobras, its navy, and oil industry regulators rushed to investigate multiple reports of an oil leak from an offshore field yesterday, but said they found no signs of oil in the water.
Petrobras itself had raised the alarm on Wednesday, reporting an oil problem near the giant P-57 oil production ship in the Jubarte field, Brazil’s environmental protection agency Ibama said.
The navy said it received reports on the spill as early as Wednesday, and the Folha de Sao Paulo daily newspaper said oil workers reported a 1 km (0.6 mile) long oil stain near the P-57 when they returned from their shifts at sea. Boats and aircraft were deployed to investigate, but found nothing.
“After news of a supposed stain near the P-57, there resulted this afternoon a verification on location that confirmed the normality of operations in the region,” Petrobras said late on Thursday.
It added that “all its control systems on production and drilling units off the coast of Espirito Santo state are operating within the parameters of normality.”
A leader of the union that represents workers on the P-57 told Reuters a small spill could have dispersed before a formal inspection took place.
“It’s almost impossible to imagine that Petrobras would have informed Ibama of something if they didn’t at least see oil in the water,” said Valnisio Hoffman, head of administration at Sindipetro Espirito Santo union. “You don’t report something that’s not there.”
