Heritage confirms new oil spill in Tarouba

KE­JAN HAYNES

Lead Ed­i­tor – News­gath­er­ing

State-owned Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed is in­ves­ti­gat­ing yet an­oth­er oil spill—this time in Tarou­ba—even as Gov­ern­ment faces crit­i­cism over its han­dling of a sep­a­rate off­shore spill that af­fect­ed wa­ters near Venezuela.

In a state­ment is­sued to­day, Her­itage said it re­spond­ed on May 14 to sight­ings of oil in the vicin­i­ty of Rang­ie Nanan Dri­ve, Tarou­ba, and had al­ready be­gun clean-up op­er­a­tions.

The com­pa­ny said con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed soil was be­ing re­moved from the area while in­ves­ti­ga­tions con­tin­ue in­to the source of the spill.

Her­itage al­so said rep­re­sen­ta­tives were en­gag­ing near­by res­i­dents, ad­dress­ing con­cerns and pro­vid­ing sup­port where nec­es­sary. It added that air qual­i­ty test­ing and mon­i­tor­ing were on­go­ing “as a pre­cau­tion­ary mea­sure”.

The Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries, the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty and oth­er reg­u­la­to­ry agen­cies have been no­ti­fied, Her­itage said.

The lat­est in­ci­dent comes days af­ter Gov­ern­ment de­fend­ed its re­sponse to an off­shore oil spill first de­tect­ed on May 1 in Her­itage’s Main Field in the Gulf of Paria.

On Wednes­day, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Roodal Mooni­lal told Par­lia­ment there was no pol­i­cy re­quir­ing the Min­istry of En­er­gy to pub­licly dis­close small oil spills, as he re­spond­ed to ques­tions from for­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Stu­art Young.

Young had ques­tioned why the May 1 spill was on­ly pub­licly ac­knowl­edged on May 10, af­ter Venezuela is­sued a com­mu­niqué claim­ing the in­ci­dent neg­a­tive­ly af­fect­ed parts of its coast­line.

“The very night of May 9, our state­ment from the Min­istry of En­er­gy was sent to His Ex­cel­len­cy, Am­bas­sador of Venezuela in Port of Spain,” Mooni­lal said.

The is­sue be­came pub­lic af­ter Venezue­lan au­thor­i­ties warned the spill posed “se­vere risks” to ecosys­tems in the states of Su­cre and Delta Amacuro and in the Gulf of Paria.

In its May 10 state­ment, the Min­istry of En­er­gy said Her­itage de­tect­ed the off­shore spill at 7.25 am on May 1 and im­me­di­ate­ly ac­ti­vat­ed oil spill re­sponse pro­to­cols. The min­istry said mod­el­ling showed hy­dro­car­bons could have crossed in­to Venezue­lan wa­ters if left un­treat­ed.

The min­istry said the spill was es­ti­mat­ed at ten bar­rels of oil and that chem­i­cal dis­per­sants were de­ployed be­tween six and eight nau­ti­cal miles from the Trinidad-Venezuela bor­der