Fish­er­men and Friends of the Sea (FFOS) are shocked that the source of the on­go­ing oil spill has not yet been dis­cov­ered days af­ter the dis­as­ter be­gan.It means that as we write our mem­bers hard­ship and the degra­da­tion to our once sa­cred en­vi­ron­ment is in­creas­ing.The im­pact of an oil spill is dead­ly to all life in the en­vi­ron­ment and to hu­man health. We are left in a quandary re­gard­ing sev­er­al unan­swered ques­tions.

Can the Chair­man of Petrotrin please ad­vise our be­lea­guered na­tion:

1. What has Petrotrin done in the past ten years to ad­dress the 20,000+ slow leaks from im­prop­er­ly laid or par­tial­ly de­com­posed oil pipelines which were pub­li­cised ten years ago by the past Chair­man of the EMA, Prof Agard?

2. Can the Chair­man of Petrotrin say with cer­tain­ty whether the present oil spill em­anates from one of these 20,000+ erod­ed pipelines? Can Petrotrin shut down these lines im­me­di­ate­ly un­til the spill is con­tained?

3. Bear­ing in mind the com­pen­sa­tion paid by BP to stake­hold­ers, in­clud­ing fish­er­folk af­ter its re­cent cat­a­stroph­ic oil spill in the Gulf of Mex­i­co, can the Chair­man now ad­vise the na­tion what com­pen­sa­tion it will pay to our af­fect­ed stake­hold­ers?

4. Can Petrotrin share its emer­gency re­sponse pro­to­cols?

5. Can Petrotrin ex­plain why their clean-up op­er­a­tions are fo­cussed on on­ly one beach, Queens Beach, where­as more than ten beach­es are af­fect­ed to date?

6. Can Petrotrin say what is the chem­i­cal dis­per­sant they are us­ing and what is the en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pact of this chem­i­cal on the fish­ery?

7. Based on the fact that pipelines have been leak­ing with the knowl­edge of the Board of Di­rec­tors for at least a decade, will the EMA now in­ves­ti­gate the Hon Min­is­ter of En­er­gy, the Chair­man and the CEO of Petrotrin?

8. Res­i­dents who live on the shore­line have not been re­lo­cat­ed be­cause Petrotrin is not pro­vid­ing se­cu­ri­ty to pro­tect the evac­u­at­ed homes. Can the Chair­man please ad­vise the pub­lic what are the re­lo­ca­tion guide­lines for af­fect­ed res­i­dents in the event of an oil of gas dis­as­ter such as this?

FFOS sup­ports re­spon­si­ble mon­eti­sa­tion of our oil and gas, but won­der why so many have been forced to suf­fer for so long with the ap­par­ent si­lence of the EMA.

Gary Aboud

Sec­re­tary, Fish­er­men and Friends of the Sea