Government was alerted to a gasoline leak at the Rubis terminal in St George’s on Tuesday, a representative now says.

In a statement sent to The Royal Gazette yesterday, a spokeswoman for the Ministry of Environment confirmed that Government was told of the leak “on Tuesday”.

A time was not provided.

Jonathan Starling, executive director of the environmental group Greenrock, said that Rubis was being “cautiously defensive” about the scale of the spill.

“I’m sure they could issue a ballpark,” he said.

“They would know how much gasoline they had, and be able to estimate how much is left, and the sum of that would give them a reliable figure.”

He echoed comments made by Stuart Hayward, of the Bermuda Environmental and Sustainability Taskforce, to The Royal Gazette about the need for greater transparency.

“Leaving it open for speculation is a recipe for disaster.

“I can understand being worried about liability issues and all that. However, the public have a right to know about pollution incidents, from both a public health aspect and an environmental aspect,” Mr Starling said.

“The longer it’s left to speculation, the harder it will be to contain the story.”

On Thursday night, Rubis said the leak was detected in piping to a storage tank at the Ferry Road facility on Monday.

“We immediately put into action our spill response plan to stop the leak and work with authorities to begin clean up,” an issued statement said. The company said the tank was contained within a “protective berm”.

The company said that an “accurate estimate” of how much gasoline was released and a timeline for the clean up was “not available”, but that the leak posed “no immediate threat to workers or neighbouring properties”.

The statement from Rubis came after a well-placed source said the size of the spill was more than 22,000 gallons. The source — who spoke with The Royal Gazette on Thursday afternoon on the condition of anonymity — also said several hours passed from the time when the leak was first detected by the company until the Government was notified.

“Rubis and their remediation team are best placed to answer questions about volume,” the Ministry of the Environment spokeswoman said when asked about the size of the leak.

“The Ministry of the Environment has been actively monitoring public health and safety since being informed of the leak at the Rubis fuel storage facility, and will continue to closely monitor the remediation work to safeguard the public.”

In a statement released earlier this week, environment minister Sylvan Richards said he had visited the site on Tuesday.

“There appears to be no immediate health and safety risk,” he said on Wednesday.

Mr Richards said that Rubis had a team of environmental specialists arriving to deal with any damage caused by the spill. Government environment experts were also assisting with “pollution-control efforts”.