Greenpeace scores Petron for haphazard handling of oil sludge
Environmental group Greenpeace scored Petron Corp. for the supposed haphazard handling of drums of bunker oil sludge collected from the shores of Guimaras barangays affected by the oil spill.
A report by GMA News on Saturday quoted Greenpeace campaigner Von Hernandez as saying "they're (Petron) just dumping the sludge on the shores... haphazardly."
He warned that, "the sludge may break out of the containers and return to the shores at the next high tide."
Petron Corp. is reportedly looking for a disposal site for the oil-soaked debris gathered from the shoreline clean up operations.
Carlos Tan, the Health, Safety and Environment manager for Petron Corporation, said during Task Force Guimaras' press conference Thursday that they have yet to find an ideal site about a hectare-wide where the debris from the oil spill would be disposed.
For the meantime though, Guimaras island will serve as the 'temporary dumpsite,' Tan said.
This is although Governor JC Rahman Nava aired that they 'have had of the oil.' He is demanding that Petron provide a barge that would ship out the debris gathered from the shoreline clean up operations.
As of Thursday, according to Petron Foundation's Malou Erni, clean up teams have already gathered 95.04 metric tons of oil-soaked debris as a result of bunker fuel being washed ashore. These are placed in sacks, and stocked one on top of another with their contents slowly seeping back into the sands.
About seventeen of the 220 kilometers of affected coastline have been scrubbed clean of bunker fuel, according to Erni.
Tan assured that the temporary dumping site in Guimaras will not damage the environment, and will be hygienic.
"The lot will be lined with plastic so that the oil will not seep into the ground," Tan explained.
Petron Foundation, which is conducting its own clean up operations, has agreed to speed up the clean up from about six kilometers of coastline a day to ten.
Erni estimated that the coastal clean up operations will be over in 30-45 days.