File photo of oil spill | Photo credit: N Sai Charan
The underwater oil pipelines owned by the Chennai Petroleum Corporation Limited (CPCL) at Pattanamcherry, off the Nagapattinam coast, will be permanently decommissioned on or before May 31. A decision to this effect was taken at a peace meeting convened by the Nagapattinam district administration on Thursday.
A peace meeting was held on Thursday at the office of the Joint Director of Fisheries and Fishermen Welfare in Nagapattinam in the presence of officials from fisheries, revenue, police, state pollution control board and CPCL, which was attended by representatives of seven coastal fishermen from Nagapattinam taluk. The villages of Akkaraipettai, Keechankuppam, Melapattinamcheri, Keezhapattinamcheri, Samandhanpettai, Nambiar Nagar, and Kallar participated. The fishermen insisted on the charter of their demands, including removal of the pipeline from the vicinity.
A resolution taken in the meeting said that the CPCL would do reverse flushing to clean the oil pipelines after giving prior notice to the district administration, fisheries and police department and fishermen of the taluk.
comes after the meeting a leak was detected on March 2 in a nine kilometer long pipeline owned by CPCL off the Nagapattinam coast. The pipeline was used to carry crude from Oil and Natural Gas Corporation’s Narimanam oil wells to CPCL’s now-defunct second refinery at Nagapattinam. cpcl worker leak stopped On 5 March.
Fishermen from villages in and around Pattinamcherry had avoided By going out to sea for a few days and started their work only when the district administration promised to organize a peace meeting to take a call on the pipelines.