SASCHA WIL­SON

Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny Ltd has re­port­ed com­plet­ing 90 per cent clean-up of the oil spill at the South Oropouche riv­er, al­so known as New Cut Chan­nel.

On the twelfth day of clean-up op­er­a­tions this morn­ing, the com­pa­ny did a vir­tu­al tour of the af­fect­ed area of the riv­er. The spill, which was re­port­ed to the com­pa­ny on Wednes­day 18 No­vem­ber 2020, had af­fect­ed a 3.7-kilo­me­tre area along the river­bank.

Shyam Dyal, Health, Safe­ty and En­vi­ron­ment Man­ag­er, said no free oil was ob­served on the sur­face of the wa­ter and the man­grove ap­peared healthy.

"When we look at the riv­er ecosys­tem, what we are see­ing is no free oil on the sur­face of the riv­er.  We are see­ing wildlife.  We are see­ing healthy man­grove through­out,” Dyal re­port­ed.  “You have some barks on the man­grove that may have some oil stains and the rea­son for that is that we have tak­en a pol­i­cy de­ci­sion not to use any chem­i­cals, ab­solute­ly no chem­i­cals."

While the clean-up is 90 per cent com­plet­ed, he said Her­itage would be leav­ing the re­main­ing ten per cent to na­ture.

"The in­ter­na­tion­al prac­tice is when you have an in­ci­dent in a man­grove or riv­er ecosys­tem, you al­low nat­ur­al at­ten­u­a­tion to take place.  Nat­ur­al at­ten­u­a­tion means that you al­low na­ture to clean it­self."

Dyal fur­ther ex­plained they did not want to risk go­ing deep­er in­to the man­grove and dam­ag­ing the ecosys­tem.

“Nei­ther was soil re­moved nor was the man­grove cut dur­ing the clean-up,” he ex­plained. “On­ly leaves with oil were care­ful­ly plucked and tak­en away in cro­cus bags.”

Not­ing that they had seen at least four caimans dur­ing the tour, Dyal al­so re­vealed the com­pa­ny's wildlife res­cue team have been vis­it­ing the riv­er every day since the in­ci­dent, res­cu­ing and ex­am­in­ing caimans and oth­er wildlife. He said any af­fect­ed an­i­mal would be tak­en to an off­site fa­cil­i­ty where it would be cleaned, re­ha­bil­i­tat­ed and even­tu­al­ly re­leased back in­to the wild.

The Her­itage HSE man­ag­er al­so point­ed out that the ma­jor­i­ty of fish­er­folk were hired to as­sist with the clean-up ex­er­cise, along with about 12 of their boats.

“The com­pa­ny has been work­ing with the fish­er­folk, oys­ter and crab catch­ers, through the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture,” he said.

Fish­er­folk had called for com­pen­sa­tion as their liveli­hoods were af­fect­ed by the spill.

Dyal as­sured that through­out the clean-up ac­tiv­i­ties, the com­pa­ny had main­tained a high lev­el of safe­ty, not just for its per­son­nel and the con­trac­tor, but al­so the fish­er­folk.