Petroperu, the country's state-owned energy company, said a fresh oil spill in the Peruvian Amazon was detected from the country's four-decades-old pipeline last Thursday. T
According to Reuters, this is not the first oil spill in the country, as it previously suffered three leaks within 2016 alone.
Petroperu did not provide an estimate for how much oil was releasead but noted that a contingency plan is now being implemented to control further damage and eventual threat to the environment.
The latest spill happened in a ravine in the province of Condorcanqui, Yahoo News reports.
The two spills leaked approximately 3,000 barrels of oil that polluted rivers last February. Because of this, indigenous communities were affected and the 687-mile pipeline was shut down for repair.
The third spill occurred becase the oil company was conducting illegal pumping of crude oil through the pipeline.
According to The Indian Express, the Peruvian government has dismissed the head of Petroperu, German Velasquez. They have also fined the energy company with $3.5 million after the newest oil spill incident.
President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski will be more pressured to pass reforms that will help resolve or avoid future leaks.
It is unclear how fourth spill occurred, but Energy and Mines Minister Gonzalo Tamayo announced that the decades-old pipeline will not function for at least a year.
There have been 23 ruptures in the pipeline since 2011, according to the ombudsman's office.
Since the pipeline's closure, Peru's relatively small oil production has dropped to about 37,000 barrels per day. Petroperu mainly transports and commercializes oil products in Peru, a relatively small producer of crude.
Support had been growing for the company to take part in oil production through partnerships with private companies before this year's spills.
To learn more about the broken pipeline and devastating oil spills in the Amazon, check out the video below.