CARACAS – An oil spill occurred recently at the refinery on the Caribbean island of Curacao and clean-up operations are nearly complete, state-owned Petroleos de Venezuela, or PDVSA, said.

PDVSA did not say how the spill happened or how much crude seeped out.

“The event at Refineria Isla, in Curacao, happened more than 10 days ago” and was “quickly dealt with” by company management and the island’s government, PDVSA said in a statement released on Wednesday.

Reports about the spill appeared this week in the press.

Curacao’s coast guard said the spill occurred on Aug. 17 and affected the Jan Kok nature reserve, leaving animals covered in petroleum, the El Universal newspaper reported.

Over the weekend, an explosion at the Amuay refinery in the northwestern Venezuelan state of Falcon killed 42 people, wounded 132 others and left eight people missing, officials said.

The Amuay refinery, one of the three in the Paraguana Refinery Complex, or CRP, was rocked by an explosion last Saturday that started a fire and damaged about 500 nearby buildings.

The blast started a fire that burned for four days and affected nine fuel tanks at the facility.

The Attorney General’s Office, the CICPC criminal investigations agency, the Sebin police intelligence agency and PDVSA specialists are investigating the blast, Attorney General Luisa Ortega Diaz said. EFE