Assistance for Oil Spill Triggers
A spillage at a refinery north-of Lima on 15/01/2022 caused at most 2,100 tons of oil into the sea and drift northwards. This affected a marine zone of 80 km that includes protected areas for marine life found only in Peru’s waters.
Soon after the spill, oil that had been carried north by the flow of the Humboldt current immediately began affecting nearby waters and shorelines in Ventanilla, as well as the neighbouring districts of Ancón, Aucallama, Chancay and Santa Rosa.
Due to the magnitude of the spillage and the vulnerability of the affected areas the Government declared an environmental emergency for 90 days and requested UN assistance in dealing with the impacts of the spillage, which is considered one of the most devastating ecological disasters in Peru’s history.
The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), through their Joint Environment Unit (JEU), deployed a team of response and technical experts, including experts from UN Disaster Assessment and Coordination (UNDAC) and the European Union Civil Protection Mechanism (EUCPM) to Peru to assist the Government’s response.
The JEU team sought to advise the Government through technical assistance on containment and clean-up, on managing and coordinating response to the spill’s environmental and socioeconomic impacts and on reducing the risk of future oil spill disasters.
The team arrived in Lima, Peru on 22 January. They began to work with the UN System in Peru. OCHA’s Humanitarian Advisory Team within the UN Resident Coordinator’s Office(RCO) was responsible for engaging with national and sub-national government offices and supporting coordination among more than 30 state institutions. The team also met Repsol’s technical staff.
The deployment’s experts in oil spill incident management and rapid environmental assessments conducted reconnaissance visits with technical counterparts from public institutions to begin learning about the spill’s impact. The technical experts carried out analyses on the spill’s distribution, on the vulnerabilities of nearby natural resources, on the social and human impacts of the disaster and on clean-up and containment methodologies and implementation.
