Oil company says bombing on pipeline caused spill
A bomb damaged a section of Colombia’s Cano Limon pipeline, state-run oil company Ecopetrol said, causing a crude oil spill around the site of the explosion.
The bombing, the eighteenth on the pipeline this year, occurred in the rural municipality of Saravena, in the province of Arauca near the border with Venezuela.
“The attack caused a rupture in the tubing and a spill of crude on the ground and into vegetation. Some of the oil was contained in the crater made by the bomb,” Ecopetrol said in a statement.
The company will send in a clean-up crew as soon as the military has secured the area, Ecopetrol said.
The company did not attribute the attack to a particular armed group.
The leftist National Liberation Army (ELN) rebels, considered a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union, regularly attacks oil infrastructure.
There have been more than two dozen attacks on Colombian pipelines so far in 2019.
The 485-mile (780-km) Cano Limon, which can transport up to 210,000 barrels per day, was kept offline for most of 2018 because of more than 80 bombings.
Reporting by Nelson Bocanegra Writing by Julia Symmes Cobb; Editing by Kim Coghill
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