KARACHI, Sept 15: A pipeline carrying oil waste burst on Thursday in Bhitai Colony, near Korangi Crossing, spilling its content onto the ground off the main Korangi Road. As the burst occurred in the afternoon, the oil waste started gushing out of it. Many people with plastic cans and other containers, some loaded on donkey-carts, reached the spot to fill them with the thick black liquid taking it for oil. However, having realized that it was just waste, the oil hunters slipped away.

Police ruled out that it was a sabotage and said the pipeline was very old and a blockage in it with the accumulation of air pressure might have caused the burst.

DSP of Bin Qasim Akram Abro said the pipeline was carrying the oil waste from the National Refinery Limited to the sea. He said Brig (retd) Saleem Murad, director for administration of the NRL, visited the spot. Mr Abro quoted Brig Murad as saying that the eight-inch diameter concrete pipeline was laid in 1964 by the company for dumping its oil waste into the sea.

Mr Abro said that people gathered around the spot where the burst took place and the police reached there to help control the situation. The breach in the pipeline was being plugged till the filing of this report, he added.

However, officials of both the NRL and the Pakistan Refinery Limited disowned the burst pipeline, attributing it to each other.

NRL Deputy Managing Director (Finance) Asad Siddiqui denied the burst in the NRL pipeline and said: “It is not our pipeline.”

The manager, Commercial and Supply, of the PRL, Aftab Hussain, said: “It is the NRL’s pipeline.”