WorkSafe Victoria said on Tuesday that it has issued directives for Esso Australia to check on the alleged corrosion problems at its Longford oil and gas facilities following the occurrence of the series of oil and gas leaks in August this year and November last year.

The state safety authority said that its provisional improvement notice on Esso requires the oil company to investigate the source of the leak and conduct repair activities that would fix existing leaks at the plant and test for possible leaks on its piping network within the facility.

Esso was hit by an oil leak on August 20 that forced the shutting down of an off-shore platform connected to its plant as WorkSafe said that the incident is now under its investigation to identify the cause of the problem.

Also, an earlier gas leaks that occurred at the Longford plant in November were also included in WorkSafe's investigations, which then prompted the safety authority in instructing Esso to devise ways that would upgrade the company's safeguards in dealing with oil and gas leaks.

Esso announced that the Middle Road leading to its Longford plant would be temporarily closed this week to make way for digging activities on the pipeline that connects the facility to Exxon Mobil's, Esso's parent company, Long Island Point plant near Hastings.

The company said that work crews are set to dig up the pipeline for possible corrosion problems and subsequent repair works, which it surmised could be the source of the series of leaks that had plagued its Longford facility since last year.