A “crude oil leak” from a TotalEnergies refinery polluted “an area of 500 m2” of the Loire, the longest river in France, the prefecture said on Sunday.
“The leak materialized as a 2 cm breach on a weld seam”, which created “a trickle of flow which led to an iridescence of a surface of approximately 500 m2 in the Loire”, a specified the Loire-Atlantique prefecture.
“This area could be partly contained by a double containment system via floating booms despite climatic conditions which make it difficult to encircle this iridescent zone,” she reported.
The flow of crude oil was stopped overnight and “the system was completed this morning,” TotalEnergies assured Sunday. According to the prefecture, “no more flow of crude oil is spilling into the Loire” and “interventions” have been launched “to permanently plug the leak”.
“The quantity of product escaped into the Loire is less than 15 m3,” according to TotalEnergies. Analyzes carried out on the banks of the Loire “revealed no trace of hydrocarbon” and “no anomaly in the air either” was recorded, the company said.
“The iridescent waters should partly disperse naturally and be transferred, by the action of the wind, to the banks,” the prefecture had previously indicated, ensuring that the assessment of the environmental impact of this leak was continued.
In December 2022, a leak from this refinery, classified Seveso high threshold, caused the flow of 700,000 liters of gasoline.
The Donges platform, which occupies an area of nearly 350 hectares and where 650 employees work, is the group's second refinery in France, after that of Normandy, in Gonfreville-l'Orcher. The Donges site has a processing capacity of 11 million tonnes of crude oil per year, for a storage capacity of 2.2 million m3 (crude oil and finished products), according to the same source.
