OIL SPILL ALARM

GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Se­nior Re­porter

geisha.kow­[email protected]

The Gov­ern­ment’s han­dling of an off­shore oil spill in the Gulf of Paria has come un­der scruti­ny, with the Op­po­si­tion and a po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst rais­ing con­cerns about de­layed dis­clo­sure, ac­count­abil­i­ty and the po­ten­tial diplo­mat­ic fall­out in an al­ready sen­si­tive re­la­tion­ship with neigh­bour­ing Venezuela.

Mean­while, ef­forts to ob­tain a com­ment from Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar were un­suc­cess­ful yes­ter­day, as she re­ferred all ques­tions on the mat­ter to En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal.

While Mooni­lal yes­ter­day sought to down­play the in­ci­dent, dis­miss­ing it as a mi­nor, quick­ly con­tained event and in­sist­ing there was no cause for alarm, for­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter and Op­po­si­tion mem­ber Stu­art Young ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment and Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny Ltd of at­tempt­ing to con­ceal what he de­scribed as a sig­nif­i­cant en­vi­ron­men­tal in­ci­dent.

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Shane Mo­hammed al­so warned that poor com­mu­ni­ca­tion may have un­nec­es­sar­i­ly strained bi­lat­er­al ties with Cara­cas.

The con­tro­ver­sy erupt­ed fol­low­ing a state­ment is­sued late Sat­ur­day from the gov­ern­ment of Venezuela, which alert­ed the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty to an oil spill it said orig­i­nat­ed from T&T’s wa­ters.

The Venezue­lan com­mu­nique claimed the spill caused en­vi­ron­men­tal dam­age in the Gulf of Paria and along coastal ar­eas of Su­cre and Delta Amacuro, stat­ing, “Eval­u­a­tions car­ried out by Venezue­lan au­thor­i­ties show se­vere risks to man­groves, wet­lands, ma­rine fau­na and strate­gic hy­dro­bi­o­log­i­cal re­sources for food se­cu­ri­ty and the eco­log­i­cal bal­ance of the re­gion. Like­wise, im­pacts have been record­ed on vul­ner­a­ble species and ecosys­tems of high en­vi­ron­men­tal sen­si­tiv­i­ty.”

Cara­cas al­so in­struct­ed its For­eign Min­istry to im­me­di­ate­ly re­quest all per­ti­nent in­for­ma­tion re­gard­ing this in­ci­dent, as well as the cor­re­spond­ing ac­tion plan for the mit­i­ga­tion and con­tain­ment of the spill, as it al­so de­mand­ed “com­pli­ance with the oblig­a­tions es­tab­lished in in­ter­na­tion­al en­vi­ron­men­tal law and the ur­gent adop­tion of repa­ra­tion mea­sures for the dam­age caused.”

In re­sponse, T&T’s Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries re­leased an ac­count of the in­ci­dent yes­ter­day, con­firm­ing that Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um de­tect­ed an oil spill at its main off­shore field at ap­prox­i­mate­ly 7.25 am on May 1.

Ac­cord­ing to the min­istry, oil spill re­sponse pro­to­cols were im­me­di­ate­ly ac­ti­vat­ed and reg­u­la­to­ry agen­cies, in­clud­ing the min­istry it­self, the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) and the T&T Coast Guard, were no­ti­fied with­out de­lay.

The min­istry re­port­ed that oil spill tra­jec­to­ry mod­el­ling in­di­cat­ed a risk of un­treat­ed hy­dro­car­bons po­ten­tial­ly cross­ing in­to Venezue­lan wa­ters.

It said ap­proval to de­ploy chem­i­cal dis­per­sants was there­fore grant­ed at 9.50 am on May 1, with dis­per­sants ap­plied six to eight nau­ti­cal miles from the mar­itime bor­der.

Sub­se­quent vi­su­al as­sess­ments, drone sur­veil­lance and ves­sel in­spec­tions re­port­ed­ly found no vis­i­ble hy­dro­car­bons re­main­ing on the sea sur­face.

The re­lease said the source of the leak was se­cured and re­paired on the same day, with the af­fect­ed in­stal­la­tion re­turn­ing to ser­vice on May 2.

The spill was es­ti­mat­ed at ap­prox­i­mate­ly ten bar­rels of oil, and dai­ly in­spec­tions have since shown no re­cur­rence.

The Min­istry of En­er­gy added it would col­lab­o­rate with all rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties lo­cal­ly and abroad to pro­vide any ad­di­tion­al in­for­ma­tion which may be re­quired, stat­ing it is al­so “com­mit­ted to work­ing with its coun­ter­parts in the Bo­li­var­i­an Re­pub­lic of Venezuela to de­vel­op a struc­tured frame­work to man­age any in­ci­dents of this na­ture which may arise in the fu­ture along our shared bor­der.”

Ad­dress­ing the mat­ter via What­sApp yes­ter­day, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Mooni­lal char­ac­terised the in­ci­dent as “a mi­nor event in Trinidad and To­ba­go wa­ters that was dealt with in 48 hours.”

“The sit­u­a­tion was con­tained quick­ly and ef­fec­tive­ly,” Mooni­lal said, while main­tain­ing that there was no sig­nif­i­cant en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pact.

He al­so di­rect­ed blame to­ward the for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) ad­min­is­tra­tion, ar­gu­ing that in­her­it­ed in­fra­struc­ture prob­lems were a con­tribut­ing fac­tor.

Mooni­lal said “di­lap­i­dat­ed in­fra­struc­ture and age­ing pipeline in­stal­la­tions” left be­hind by the PNM had in­creased the like­li­hood of leaks, which he de­scribed as com­mon fol­low­ing “years of PNM ne­glect”.

De­spite the min­is­ter’s as­sur­ances, Young strong­ly dis­agreed with the Gov­ern­ment’s char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion of events.

He ac­cused both Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um and the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion of de­lib­er­ate­ly with­hold­ing in­for­ma­tion from the pub­lic about what he called a “ma­jor off­shore oil spill.”

“Hav­ing re­gard to the an­nounce­ment by the Min­istry of En­er­gy a short while ago about an oil spill on May 1, it is clear that both Her­itage and the Gov­ern­ment sought to cov­er up and hide a ma­jor off­shore oil spill, which is a sig­nif­i­cant en­vi­ron­men­tal event,” Young said.

Young al­so ques­tioned why the pop­u­la­tion was not in­formed at the time of the spill and ar­gued that the de­lay un­der­mined pub­lic trust and ac­count­abil­i­ty.

He al­so called for a for­mal in­ves­ti­ga­tion to de­ter­mine who was re­spon­si­ble for sup­press­ing in­for­ma­tion about the in­ci­dent.

“There must be an in­ves­ti­ga­tion now in­to who sup­pressed this in­for­ma­tion of an oil spill since May 1,” he said.

“En­vi­ron­men­tal in­ci­dents of this na­ture are sig­nif­i­cant and de­mand open­ness. This is yet an­oth­er ex­am­ple of the man­ner in which the Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar Gov­ern­ment op­er­ates. They try to ‘get away from every­thing’ rather than face the pop­u­la­tion with the facts and truth.”

Young fur­ther raised con­cerns about the ef­fec­tive­ness of ex­ist­ing mon­i­tor­ing mech­a­nisms, not­ing that dur­ing the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion, sig­nif­i­cant in­vest­ment had been made in an oil-spill radar de­tec­tion sys­tem de­signed specif­i­cal­ly to iden­ti­fy spills in the Gulf of Paria.

He said the sys­tem was func­tion­ing ful­ly up to the time the PNM left of­fice and ques­tioned whether it re­mains op­er­a­tional un­der the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Adding an­oth­er di­men­sion to the de­bate, Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Shane Mo­hammed told Guardian Me­dia the most trou­bling as­pect of the in­ci­dent was the ap­par­ent fail­ure to com­mu­ni­cate prompt­ly, par­tic­u­lar­ly giv­en the sen­si­tiv­i­ty of re­la­tions be­tween T&T and Venezuela.

Mo­hammed ques­tioned why nei­ther the Min­istry of En­er­gy nor Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um made the spill pub­lic when it oc­curred on May 1, not­ing that trans­paren­cy should have been para­mount in light of on­go­ing diplo­mat­ic ef­forts with Cara­cas.

“My is­sue here is the del­i­ca­cy of the re­la­tion­ship be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go and Venezuela,” Mo­hammed said. “This is a high­ly sen­si­tive, time-bound and emo­tion­al­ly charged geopo­lit­i­cal en­vi­ron­ment, es­pe­cial­ly in mat­ters re­lat­ing to en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty and cross-bor­der co­op­er­a­tion.”

He ex­pressed con­cern that Venezuela is­sued what he de­scribed as an “ag­gres­sive” com­mu­nique be­fore T&T, as he fur­ther not­ed that T&T’s min­is­ters have both in­di­vid­ual and col­lec­tive re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to en­sure the Prime Min­is­ter and the pop­u­la­tion are prop­er­ly in­formed.

Ac­cord­ing to Mo­hammed, even if ap­pro­pri­ate re­sponse mea­sures were al­ready un­der­way, the ab­sence of ear­ly pub­lic com­mu­ni­ca­tion risked cre­at­ing an im­pres­sion of se­cre­cy or neg­li­gence.

He warned that er­rors in judg­ment or de­lays in trans­paren­cy could un­nec­es­sar­i­ly com­pli­cate diplo­mat­ic re­la­tions at a time when the Gov­ern­ment is seek­ing to strength­en ties with Venezuela.

“We can­not af­ford to drop the ball,” Mo­hammed said. “We have to take in­to con­sid­er­a­tion the geopol­i­tics in Trinidad and To­ba­go and in the world that is af­fect­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go; it’s very del­i­cate. We have to tread care­ful­ly.”