Kevon Felmine

Hours af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley ex­pressed con­cern over T&T's de­clin­ing oil pro­duc­tion and the $20 bil­lion un­ser­vice­able debt to Petrotrin, bar­rels of the pre­cious com­mod­i­ty have once again leaked in­to the Gulf of Paria.

La Brea Fish­er­folk As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Alvin La Bor­de said since Sun­day, oil was seen em­a­nat­ing from Well ABM 37 lo­cat­ed in the Brighton Ma­rine field.

Last Ju­ly, Petrotrin com­menced the plug­ging and aban­don­ment of the well. In his ad­dress to the na­tion on Sun­day, Row­ley said that for the last ten years, T&T has been sit­ting on an oil pro­duc­tion cri­sis with out­put drop­ping from 143,000 bar­rels a day in 2006 to 78,000 in 2015 – the low­est in 65 years.

He said low pro­duc­tion was masked by favourable prices but with sharp de­cline in the past two years, the sit­u­a­tion can no longer es­cape the coun­try's at­ten­tion. When La Brea res­i­dents woke up to the pun­gent smell of oil yes­ter­day, it im­me­di­ate­ly trig­gered the hor­rors of the dev­as­tat­ing 2013 oil spill.

For days they were un­able to cook and those liv­ing clos­est the shore had to va­cate their homes.

Scores gath­ered yes­ter­day along Cof­fee Beach yes­ter­day as Petrotrin of­fi­cials as­sessed the dam­age while clean-up crews loaded bags of black­ened sand on­to trucks.

They said many peo­ple were still suf­fer­ing from acid re­flux, res­pi­ra­to­ry dis­eases and mus­cle weak­ness as a re­sult of the 2013 dis­as­ter.

Just last month, a dam­aged off­shore line leaked a sig­nif­i­cant amount of oil in­to the Gulf of Paria, which washed ashore at Mos­qui­to Creek, South Oropouche, La Brea, Point Fortin and Ce­dros.

It co­in­cid­ed with sev­er­al weeks of fish kills, which left fish­er­men and ven­dors still reel­ing from poor sales.

Cather­ine John said she was stand­ing in the road around 4 am when she no­ticed oil wash­ing ashore. She said her daugh­ter usu­al­ly walked her dog along the beach and when they re­turned, there was oil on their feet.

"It is not com­ing in as strong as be­fore, that we have to leave our hous­es. But with the breeze, by to­mor­row more can come up. The smell is both­er­ing me right now be­cause look at where I am liv­ing, so close to the beach," John said.

For some res­i­dents, they hope the spill brings work to the re­pressed com­mu­ni­ty where many adults spend their days at home. Dur­ing pre­vi­ous spills, some were em­ployed to clean the beach­es.

La Bor­de said yes­ter­day he had warned Petrotrin's se­cu­ri­ty and Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions De­part­ment about oil seep­ing in­to the Gulf of Paria.

He said he plead­ed with the com­pa­ny to take ex­tra pre­cau­tion since the well had been out of or­der for some­time and had col­lapsed un­der the sur­face. He sug­gest­ed that a boon be placed around the area to con­tain the seep­age but noth­ing was done.

With the na­tion­al fish­ing com­mu­ni­ty al­ready af­fect­ed by low sales, he said that did noth­ing to help to re­store their liveli­hood.

More in­fo

Source of spill not yet iden­ti­fied–Petrotrin

In a re­lease yes­ter­day, Petrotrin said fol­low­ing the heavy rain­fall over the week­end, oil was seen along the shore­line of Carat Shed Beach and Cof­fee Beach. How­ev­er, they were yet to iden­ti­fy the source.

"While Petrotrin con­tin­ues in its ef­forts to de­ter­mine the source of the oil, all ef­forts are be­ing made to en­sure the clean-up is done with­in the short­est pos­si­ble time frame," the re­lease added.

Calls to En­er­gy and En­er­gy Af­fairs Min­is­ter and La Brea MP Nicole Olivierre were unan­swered yes­ter­day.