Lucknow, Sep 16 (IANS) While an oil spill in the Ganga river in Kanpur district of Uttar Pradesh brought worries for the government officials, it came as a pleasant surprise for the villagers of the area who made some money by selling the oil.

‘The oil spill was caused by a leakage in the Barauni-Kanpur pipeline of the Indian Oil Corporation Saturday near Narayanpur village of neighbouring Unnao district. It is under control now,’ Virendra Kumar, chief distribution manager of Indian Oil, said Tuesday.

The 745 km pipeline laid in 1966 ferries diesel from an IOC oil refinery in Barauni in Bihar through Uttar Pradesh’s Mughal Sarai, Varanasi and Allahabad towns before terminating in Kanpur.

Even as officials made efforts to control the oil spill and prevent environmental damage, villagers rushed to the Ganga river after noticing a thin blue layer.

They soon realised that the layer of oil was diesel and started collecting it in all kind of buckets and containers.

‘It was sold to tractor and trucks passing through the main road at a rate of Rs.20 to 25 per litre and this continued till Sunday evening,’ a police official said.

Experts of the Chandra Shekhar Azad Agriculture University analysed the oil spill and said it was not very dangerous.

‘It was a minor leakage and will definitely have a minor affect on the biological oxygen demand of the river water. If necessary, we will release a special organism that feeds on oil and cleans the water,’ C.P. Sachan, an agricultural scientist of the university, said.