Heritage says no spill evidence amid Venezuela claim

Ke­jan Haynes

Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um says it has found no ev­i­dence of a ma­jor hy­dro­car­bon spill fol­low­ing al­le­ga­tions from Venezuela of a trans­bound­ary oil slick orig­i­nat­ing from Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The com­pa­ny said it launched an im­me­di­ate in­ves­ti­ga­tion af­ter be­ing alert­ed to a pos­si­ble ma­rine sight­ing of hy­dro­car­bons, but field in­spec­tions, ves­sel sur­veil­lance, SCA­DA mon­i­tor­ing and checks with the Coast Guard and oth­er west coast op­er­a­tors showed no ab­nor­mal­i­ties.

“Cur­rent­ly, there is no ev­i­dence to sup­port the pres­ence of large amounts of hy­dro­car­bon in the sea,” Her­itage said.

The state­ment comes as the Gov­ern­ment de­ploys mil­i­tary air and sea as­sets to in­ves­ti­gate Venezuela’s claims that satel­lite im­agery shows a slick mov­ing to­ward its coast­line in the Gulf of Paria.

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal said re­con­nais­sance op­er­a­tions are on­go­ing, while Gov­ern­ment has al­so sought fur­ther de­tails from Venezue­lan au­thor­i­ties as diplo­mat­ic en­gage­ment con­tin­ues.

Mean­while, fish­er­men in Ica­cos and Ce­dros say they have not ob­served any signs of oil in the wa­ters. One Ica­cos fish­er­man said fish­ing ac­tiv­i­ty has con­tin­ued as nor­mal, while an­oth­er res­i­dent said there had been no sight­ings of oil in the area.