Resh­ma Ra­goonath

Petrotrin pres­i­dent Khalid Has­sanali yes­ter­day de­fend­ed the com­pa­ny's use of the dis­per­sant Corex­it 9500 dur­ing oil-spill clean-up op­er­a­tions at La Brea.He said there was no cause for con­cern, since, "all the chem­i­cals we are us­ing are ap­proved chem­i­cals and we are us­ing them in the ap­proved man­ner."He made the state­ment to re­porters yes­ter­day dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence, which was al­so at­tend­ed by Petrotrin chair­man Lind­say Gillette, at the com­pa­ny's Learn­ing Re­source Cen­tre, Pointe-a-Pierre. It was held to give an up­date on the progress of the clean-up.Gillette said the com­pa­ny fol­lowed all rules and reg­u­la­tions for us­ing it."It is be­ing used in min­i­mal quan­ti­ties, in ac­cor­dance with the dis­per­sant use pol­i­cy, which is one nau­ti­cal mile off­shore up to a ten-me­tre depth of wa­ter, which is 30 feet."The first spill oc­curred two miles off­shore at a depth of 15 me­tres, the sec­ond spill oc­curred two to three miles (out, at a) depth of 20 me­tres. So we have used this par­tic­u­lar dis­per­sant, in ac­cor­dance with what is re­quired Na­tion­al Oil Spill Con­tin­gency Plan," he said.

Yes­ter­day the Petrotrin of­fi­cials were grilled about the chem­i­cal, which has been banned in the Unit­ed King­dom and Cana­da.Con­cerns have been raised about it caus­ing can­cer and killing ma­rine life af­ter it was used in the BP Gulf of Mex­i­co dis­as­ter of 2010.Has­sanali said the com­pa­ny used "ap­proved batch­es."He said: "We at Petrotrin will not par­tic­i­pate in any ac­tion that is like­ly to cause harm to peo­ple or to the en­vi­ron­ment or to wildlife."He said the com­pa­ny shared the con­cern about the chem­i­cal's im­pact on hu­mans, the en­vi­ron­ment and wildlife and point­ed out that Petrotrin was work­ing along­side the EMA (En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty) in its clean-up ef­forts."We have an agree­ment with the EMA as well. We are go­ing to be meet­ing with the EMA (this week) so in a sense we are un­der the aus­pices of the EMA go­ing for­ward," he said.

Has­sanali de­nied try­ing to avoid an­swer­ing ques­tions which raised safe­ty and health con­cerns about the prod­uct."My ob­jec­tive is not to avoid your ques­tions at all. My ob­jec­tive is to be re­spon­si­ble and rep­re­sent the in­ter­est of the res­i­dents of La Brea, as well as rep­re­sent Petrotrin and the com­mu­ni­ty at large. We did say that it is an ap­proved chem­i­cal. We al­so google as well," Has­sanali added.He said med­ical fa­cil­i­ties were open to all La Brea res­i­dents and some 200 res­i­dents had used them and doc­tors were tak­ing care of all of the res­i­dents' com­plaints, whether oil-spill-re­lat­ed or oth­er­wise.Has­sanali said the com­pa­ny's med­ical de­part­ment would ad­vise man­age­ment fur­ther on any is­sues that may be di­rect­ly re­lat­ed to the oil spill.He said all air and wa­ter qual­i­ty re­ports would be in­clud­ed in the com­pa­ny's fi­nal re­port on the spills.