Trinidad oil spill thought to be caused by sabotage...miles of black beaches
or so the Oil Company is saying..
Whether it is a case of sabotage or simply poor management practices by the state-owned PETROTRIN, as the union claims, a mysterious oil spill in south Trinidad is wreaking havoc on homes and wildlife in the area.
PETROTRIN claims it has no idea as to the source of the spills, and Energy Minister Kevin Ramnarine, who toured La Brea and other affected areas on Sunday, said “the mystery remains where this oil is coming from.”
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“There are young people and it is difficult for them to breathe…and as much as 24 families are directly affected. In addition, there are fishing vessels contaminated with oil. We are seeing crabs and dead fish along the beach.
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Ramnarine said the authorities were now seeking international assistance in dealing with the oil spill, even as the Oilfield Workers Trade Union (OWTU) maintained that PETROTRIN should shoulder the blame for the environmental disaster.
“We do not concur with the company’s offering of the excuse that it is some kind of sabotage or otherwise,” OWTU president general Ancel Roget told a news conference on Sunday.
“We want to say there is a massive cover-up of the PETROTRIN management to shield their friends, the lease operators, who they invited to and in fact gave away some of the lucrative acreage of PETROTRIN assets, and therefore a cloud of silence and secrecy has shrouded the lease operators in the La Brea situation,” he said.
Roget has accused the company of knowingly reducing the level of security in the fields, allowing thieves to roam freely.
“The reduction and removal of morning tower shifts…these shifts provided as a monitoring effort and additional security effort so that if there are any oil spills throughout fields they were reported in real time.”
Over the weekend, PETROTRIN’s president Khalid Hassanali said one of the company’s lease operators, Trinity Oil and Gas, had discovered several valves open at its operations in Rancho Quemado, allowing oil to flow out of the tanks onto the lands.
“This is of concern because the other spills have been marine. It is extremely disturbing because…the valves were found opened which doesn’t normally happen. All these things happened together,” he said, saying that the company was now investigating whether the oil spills were acts of sabotage.
“To reach that conclusion one needs to go through a process of investigation. It’s early, we can’t reach that conclusion without being fair and without investigating fully,” he told a news conference.
The company issued a statement informing residents in nearby villages that oil had been sighted along the coastline near shore and on land and that they should avoid venturing in or near the sea.
http://www.ipsnews.net/2013/12/mystery-oil-spill-turns-miles-trinidads-beaches-black/
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