Trinidad, Venezuela discuss oil spill cooperation

Trinidad and To­ba­go and Venezuela have agreed to con­tin­ue shar­ing in­for­ma­tion and strength­en­ing co­op­er­a­tion on the man­age­ment of po­ten­tial cross-bor­der hy­dro­car­bon spills fol­low­ing a bi­lat­er­al meet­ing held on May 22.

The hy­brid meet­ing brought to­geth­er of­fi­cials from both coun­tries to dis­cuss en­vi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion and on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to a re­port­ed oil spill at Ris­er Plat­form No. 2 in the Main Sol­da­do Field in the Gulf of Paria. Ear­li­er this month, the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries said re­sponse mea­sures had been ac­ti­vat­ed af­ter an oil spill was de­tect­ed in the area.

The Venezue­lan del­e­ga­tion was led by Min­is­ter of Pop­u­lar Pow­er for Ecoso­cial­ism, Fred­dy Ñáñez, and in­clud­ed Vice Min­is­ter of For­eign Af­fairs Raúl Li Causi Pérez, along with rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the Min­istry of Peo­ple's Pow­er for Fish­eries and Aqua­cul­ture and Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA).

Trinidad and To­ba­go's del­e­ga­tion was led by En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal and in­clud­ed Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries Ernesto Ke­sar, se­nior min­istry of­fi­cials, rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed and the In­sti­tute of Ma­rine Af­fairs.

Ac­cord­ing to the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries, dis­cus­sions fo­cused on the re­port­ed spill at the Main Sol­da­do Field, with both coun­tries agree­ing to con­tin­ue ex­chang­ing in­for­ma­tion as sci­en­tif­ic work and tech­ni­cal in­ves­ti­ga­tions con­tin­ue.

Dur­ing the dis­cus­sions, Mooni­lal pro­posed the es­tab­lish­ment of a joint work­ing com­mit­tee to ad­dress con­cerns linked to the in­ci­dent. He al­so said meet­ings of this na­ture could serve as a plat­form to re­new dis­cus­sions on a bi­lat­er­al oil spill con­tin­gency plan be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go and Venezuela.

The min­istry said both coun­tries reaf­firmed the im­por­tance of con­tin­ued co­op­er­a­tion, in­for­ma­tion shar­ing and co­or­di­nat­ed en­gage­ment on ma­rine en­vi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion.

It said the dis­cus­sions re­flect­ed a shared com­mit­ment to main­tain­ing open com­mu­ni­ca­tion and strength­en­ing re­gion­al col­lab­o­ra­tion in re­sponse to po­ten­tial cross-bor­der en­vi­ron­men­tal in­ci­dents.