Da­reece Po­lo

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

Emer­gency re­spon­ders from Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed are work­ing as­sid­u­ous­ly to en­sure that an oil spill in south Trinidad does not en­ter the Gulf of Paria.

Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert said so as he re­spond­ed to ques­tions from Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Wade Mark in the Up­per House yes­ter­day.

Read­ing from a Min­istry of En­er­gy state­ment, Im­bert said ab­sorbent and con­tain­ment booms were de­ployed at strate­gic lo­ca­tions along all of the wa­ter cours­es lead­ing to the Vista­bel­la Riv­er in an at­tempt to con­tain the oil. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, vac­u­um tankers are be­ing used to ex­tract the oil con­tained in the booms.

“Bar­ring un­fore­seen cir­cum­stances, it is ex­pect­ed that no more oil will be re­leased to the en­vi­ron­ment from this lo­ca­tion,” he said.

Asked about the im­pact of the oil spill on res­i­dents and the en­vi­ron­ment, Im­bert said he could not say un­til a re­port is pro­vid­ed.

“I would ex­pect that in the near fu­ture, a full re­port will be pre­pared with re­spect to the im­pact on the en­vi­ron­ment.

“With re­spect to the im­pact of the ac­tu­al pe­tro­le­um on any res­i­dent, as I just in­di­cat­ed, the au­thor­i­ties should be able to give a re­port in the very near fu­ture.”

The leak oc­curred on a 12-inch trunk pipeline in a buried sec­tion at St An­drew’s Street near South Park and Co­coyea Vil­lage, San Fer­nan­do.

Im­bert said crude oil en­tered the box drain ad­ja­cent to South Park and made its way through the storm drain to the riv­er at Agnes Street, Vista­bel­la. How­ev­er, he as­sured the pub­lic that oil had not seeped in­to the ocean.

“Sur­veil­lance has been con­duct­ed all the way to the mouth of the riv­er, how­ev­er, no oil was seen en­ter­ing the sea,” he said

The min­is­ter said since March 16, emer­gency and oil spill re­sponse per­son­nel have been on­site and will re­main un­til re­pairs, clean-up, and restora­tion op­er­a­tions are com­plet­ed. He added that air qual­i­ty lev­els are safe, based on mon­i­tor­ing which will con­tin­ue un­til the work is con­clud­ed.

The En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty and oth­er re­quired au­thor­i­ties have re­port­ed­ly been no­ti­fied about the in­ci­dent.