On Monday, Kuwait Oil Company declared a state of emergency due to an oil leak in the west of the country.
According to the company, production was not affected and no injuries occurred as a result of the leak.
The firm added, “No toxic gases were detected at the accident site”.
A video showed a gushing pipe surrounded by a large slick of oil.
The leak “occurred on land but not in a residential area”, the company spokesman Qusai Al-Amer said.
Teams have been dispatched to determine the source of the leak and contain the incident, Al-Amer noted, declining to give the exact location or the extent of the spill.
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Kuwait’s Al Rai newspaper released a video on Twitter showing a pipe spewing large amounts of oil onto barren land.
The Kuwait Oil Company has previously reported oil leaks in its fields in 2020 and 2016.
In August 2017, Kuwait experienced two oil spills, one of which was 1.6 kilometers (one mile) long. The other spill, at a joint Saudi-Kuwaiti oil field, may have caused the flow of up to 35,000 barrels of crude, according to experts.
About 90% of the government’s income in Kuwait, a significant oil producer, comes from oil.
About 2.7 million barrels are currently produced daily by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) key member.
Khalid Al-Hajire, a Kuwaiti environmental activist acknowledged that the amount of harm caused by the oil leak on Monday is yet mostly unknown.
Meanwhile, Kuwaiti oil expert AbdulSamee Bahbahani said the leak appears to stem from an abandoned oil well.
“I think the well was closed improperly, which led to erosion of the pipes and the cement cover, as well as an increase in pressure,” Bahbahani said, explaining the reason for the oil gush and warning that a spark could ignite a fire.
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