Not far from Saint-Nazaire, the Donges refinery detected an oil leak over an area of 500 m2. For now, the incident has been brought under control.
Alert on the Loire estuary. In the commune of Donges, a town located fifteen kilometers from Saint-Nazaire, a TotalEnergies refinery detected an “oil leak” over “an area of 500 m2”. In a press release published on Sunday, November 24, the Loire-Atlantique prefecture indicated that the crude oil leak extended “at the level of an elbow of a line 30 cm in diameter”. She assured that she had mobilized “all state services (…) immediately”.
And to specify: “The leak materialized as a 2 cm breach on a weld seam”, creating “a trickle of flow which led to an iridescence of a surface of approximately 500m2 in the Loire”. “This area could be partly contained by a double containment system via floating dams despite climatic conditions which make it difficult to encircle this iridescent zone,” reported the prefecture.
“Since 3:45 a.m., no more oil flows into the Loire”
TotalEnergies said it discovered the incident at 10:50 p.m. Saturday, November 23. At 1:40 in the night, the flow was stopped. “The system was completed this morning at 8:50 a.m.,” added the company. “Since 3:45 a.m., no more oil flows into the Loire,” said the prefecture. Several interventions were launched to permanently plug the leak.
According to TotalEnergies, “the quantity of product escaped into the Loire is less than 15 m3”. This leak did not cause any damage to the quality of the water, since the analyzes carried out on the banks “revealed no trace of hydrocarbon” and “no anomaly in the air either” was recorded. . The prefecture had indicated that “the iridescent waters should partly disperse naturally and be transferred, by the action of the wind, to the banks”.
With its processing capacity of 11 million tonnes of crude oil per year for a storage capacity of 2.2 million m3, the Donges site corresponds to the group's second refinery in France, after that of Normandy, in Gonfreville- l’Orcher (Seine-Maritime). In December 2022, a leak from this refinery caused the flow of 700,000 liters of gasoline.
