Venezuela minister wants compensation from T&T for oil spill

Raphael John-Lall

Free­lance Con­trib­u­tor

Venezuela’s For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Yván Gil is de­mand­ing in­for­ma­tion from Trinidad and To­ba­go about the re­cent oil spill that his gov­ern­ment in­sists orig­i­nat­ed from Trinidad, as well as com­pen­sa­tion for the fall­out from it.

Venezuela’s state-run me­dia VTV yes­ter­day re­port­ed that Gil said the spill, which em­anat­ed from a Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um field, is “ex­treme­ly se­ri­ous,” as is “the lack of in­for­ma­tion” from T&T’s Gov­ern­ment, and as­sert­ed that they do not know the ex­act ori­gin, vol­ume and type of hy­dro­car­bons in­volved from the in­ci­dent.

“Trinidad and To­ba­go has an oblig­a­tion, first and fore­most, to im­me­di­ate­ly re­port to the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment any spill or en­vi­ron­men­tal in­ci­dent. Sec­ond­ly, we must have in­for­ma­tion on the type of prod­uct that was spilled and the mea­sures tak­en to mit­i­gate it,” Gil stat­ed.

The For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter de­mand­ed “re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for this type of event” and as­sert­ed that his coun­try has sent var­i­ous types of com­mu­ni­ca­tion state­ments to the T&T Gov­ern­ment to as­sess the im­pact.

Gil showed satel­lite im­ages record­ed since April 28 that show the spill from Trinidad.

He al­so said Venezuela has been “work­ing for sev­er­al weeks” on this “very wor­ry­ing is­sue” with teams from the Venezue­lan Min­istries of Eco-so­cial­ism (En­vi­ron­ment) and Fish­eries and Aqua­cul­ture; the state-owned Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), the Na­tion­al In­sti­tute of Aquat­ic Spaces (IN­EA) and the Navy.

Gil warned of an im­pact to 1,625 square kilo­me­tres in 12 strate­gic wet­land sys­tems in his coun­try, as well as on the ac­tiv­i­ty of more than 500 fish­er­men. In ad­di­tion, Gil point­ed out that four Venezue­lan na­tion­al parks are at risk.

“There have been op­er­a­tional lim­i­ta­tions for the fish­ing fleet, which gen­er­ates sig­nif­i­cant costs and lim­its mar­ket­ing. There has been a re­al eco­nom­ic and en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pact,” the for­eign min­is­ter stat­ed, adding that more than 140 fish species were af­fect­ed in the area, in ad­di­tion to the man­groves.

He al­so claimed that this was not the first oil spill from T&T that has af­fect­ed Venezuela.

“So far, more than 12 tons of hy­dro­car­bon prod­ucts have been col­lect­ed and are be­ing analysed,” Gil said, adding that “be­tween 2015 and 2023, more than 876 spills of dif­fer­ent types of com­pounds oc­curred in the area.”

Con­tact­ed for com­ment on the claim yes­ter­day, En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal said, “We are ar­rang­ing to have dis­cus­sions with our Venezue­lan coun­ter­parts lat­er this week and will sort out all these mat­ters re small oil spill. We have been busy do­ing the tech­ni­cal and sci­en­tif­ic work.”

Two weeks ago, in re­sponse to a Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment com­mu­niqué on the oil spill, T&T’s Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries re­leased an ac­count of the in­ci­dent con­firm­ing that Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um de­tect­ed an oil spill at its main off­shore field at ap­prox­i­mate­ly 7.25 am on May 1. The min­istry re­port­ed that oil spill tra­jec­to­ry mod­el­ling in­di­cat­ed a risk of un­treat­ed hy­dro­car­bons po­ten­tial­ly cross­ing in­to Venezue­lan wa­ters.