On Feb­ru­ary 7, an oil-like sub­stance be­gan leak­ing from an over­turned barge, clear­ly aban­doned, stuck in a reef south of Cove, To­ba­go. Since then, there has been an in­ter­na­tion­al­ly co­or­di­nat­ed ef­fort to plug the leak, clean up the af­fect­ed coast­line and track down the own­ers of the barge to make them li­able for the en­vi­ron­men­tal dis­as­ter. It is the lat­est in a list of en­vi­ron­men­tal dis­as­ters which has af­fect­ed T&T.

This week, Guardian Me­dia In­ves­ti­ga­tions Desk ex­am­ines the fre­quen­cy of spills and chem­i­cal leaks which has af­fect­ed the coun­try and whether any proac­tive ac­tion is be­ing tak­en to pro­tect the coun­try from fu­ture dis­as­ters.

Joshua Seemu­n­gal, Shal­iza Has­sanali and Asha Javeed

In­ves­ti­ga­tions Desk

Be­tween 2015 and 2023, T&T had more than 876 con­firmed oil spills and chem­i­cal re­leas­es, ac­cord­ing to sta­tis­tics from the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA).

That means an en­vi­ron­men­tal ac­ci­dent oc­curs once every four days.

In 2022 and 2023 alone, there were 88 con­firmed oil spills and chem­i­cal re­leas­es. That is around one a week.

Be­tween 2015 to 2018, out of 700 con­firmed en­vi­ron­men­tal ac­ci­dents, 377 were oil spills, EMA’s man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Hay­den Ro­mano told a Pub­lic Ac­counts Com­mit­tee in 2019.

Ac­cord­ing to the EMA’s an­nu­al re­ports, there were 150 oil spills and chem­i­cal re­leas­es in­ves­ti­gat­ed in 2019; 110 in 2020; 151 in 2021; 47 in 2022; and 41 in 2023.

There has on­ly been one sig­nif­i­cant fine–$20 mil­lion to Petrotrin–and no pros­e­cu­tions for the breach­es of the EMA act de­spite a call by Ra­mano that it should be crim­i­nalised.

De­spite these num­bers and the well-known cat­a­stroph­ic en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pacts of oil spills, there have been no long-term stud­ies to as­sess its im­pact, as con­firmed by the EMA.

Apart from nat­ur­al leak­ages and aban­doned ves­sels, oth­er sources of oil leak­ages in­clude aged oil and gas in­fra­struc­ture.

The EMA in its 2015 an­nu­al re­port stat­ed that lit­tle has been done to retro­fit the in­fra­struc­ture, lead­ing to oil and chem­i­cal spills. They not­ed that pol­lu­tants from in­dus­tri­al fa­cil­i­ties in­clude To­tal Pe­tro­le­um Hy­dro­car­bons, chlo­rine, am­mo­ni­um, mer­cury, cad­mi­um and cop­per.

Ac­cord­ing to sci­en­tif­ic re­search stud­ies, heavy met­als, in tox­ic amounts, can cause gas­troin­testi­nal and kid­ney dys­func­tion, ner­vous sys­tem dis­or­ders, vas­cu­lar dam­age, im­mune sys­tem dys­func­tion, birth de­fects and can­cer.

For­mer EMA di­rec­tor Al­lan Bachan over­saw clean-up and re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion ef­forts for what was ar­guably the coun­try’s largest-ever oil spill.

On De­cem­ber 17, 2013, more than 7,550 bar­rels of Bunker C fu­el spilt in­to the Gulf of Paria for more than five hours af­ter Petrotrin sea lines rup­tured, wreak­ing hav­oc along the coast. Petrotrin was fined $20 mil­lion un­der a Cer­tifi­cate of En­vi­ron­men­tal Clear­ance (CEC).  

He sug­gest­ed that they had not learned the lessons from that cat­a­stro­phe. He said the Na­tion­al Re­sponse Sys­tem needs to be ra­tio­nalised.

“We can­not con­tin­ue to do cos­met­ic ac­tions and not have an on­go­ing mon­i­tor­ing pro­gramme on which the re­sponse ac­tiv­i­ties can be gauged,” Bachan said.

“Dif­fer­ent agen­cies have their le­gal ba­sis, strengths and spe­cif­ic man­dates and this is a ma­jor con­sid­er­a­tion. We need to re­spect that and show a unit­ed front in the face of these in­ci­dents. It should have a re­sponse and clean-up di­men­sion; a uni­fied, clear and ef­fec­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tion com­po­nent; a so­cial and liveli­hood im­pact com­po­nent; An as­sess­ment com­po­nent; an en­vi­ron­men­tal re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion and re­me­di­a­tion com­po­nent and fi­nal­ly an on­go­ing mon­i­tor­ing pro­gramme on which the re­sponse ac­tiv­i­ty can be gauged.

“I sug­gest that if this sys­tem is de­signed prop­er­ly it can be the ba­sis of re­sponse, not on­ly to oil spills but any en­vi­ron­men­tal in­ci­dent. Rest as­sured that this will not be the last,” he stat­ed.

Bachan warned that apart from sig­nif­i­cant en­vi­ron­men­tal dam­age, lo­cal economies and recre­ation may al­so be se­vere­ly im­pact­ed. He said that oil spills can cause clo­sures of beach­es, as well as recre­ation­al and com­mer­cial fish­eries.

“This is my cur­rent con­cern in To­ba­go, that tur­tle sea­son is up­on us which be­gins in March. The mi­gra­to­ry Leatherbacks are in our wa­ters. How will this af­fect nest­ing on the beach­es and lat­er the hatch­lings? Our res­i­dent hard­shell sea tur­tles de­pend on the reefs and sea­grass beds for their food. Liveli­hood from tur­tle watch­ing can be im­pact­ed,” he warned.

Her­itage on as­set in­tegri­ty

Her­itage, and its pre­de­ces­sor Petrotrin, are of­ten at the cen­tre of oil spills and leak­ages.

Last year, there were about four oil leaks from Her­itage’s pipelines at Mass­sa­hood Junc­tion, Fyz­abad.

On Feb­ru­ary 8, in a press state­ment, Her­itage said that it was cur­rent­ly un­der­tak­ing en­gi­neer­ing stud­ies con­cern­ing pipelines near Mas­sa­hood Junc­tion as part of its on­go­ing as­set in­tegri­ty pro­gramme.

“The Mas­sa­hood Junc­tion lines form part of Her­itage’s ex­ten­sive pipeline net­work. Part of the afore­men­tioned stud­ies in­cludes the con­sid­er­a­tion of var­i­ous al­ter­na­tives to re­pair or re­place the ex­ist­ing lines or to re-route the lines away from the struc­tures which were erect­ed on the ex­ist­ing pipeline right of way,” the state­ment said.

It not­ed that it will con­tin­ue dis­cus­sions with key stake­hold­ers in the com­mu­ni­ty as it reach­es its fi­nal en­gi­neered so­lu­tion.

As it stands, Her­itage cur­rent­ly pro­duces about 38,000 bar­rels of oil per day–both on­shore and off­shore com­bined.

In an in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian last Ju­ly af­ter he be­came chief ex­ec­u­tive, Erik Kesku­la ac­knowl­edged that the com­pa­ny faces is­sues of as­set in­tegri­ty by virtue of how long it has been op­er­a­tional. This, un­for­tu­nate­ly, leads to is­sues like leak­ages.

He has said that Her­itage has un­der­tak­en a ro­bust as­set in­tegri­ty pro­gramme.

“But it will take time to ad­dress and we’ve got the plans in place, as well as the re­sponse teams in place for the event,” he had said.

As for a time frame?

“Cor­ro­sion is not some­thing that starts and stops. It’s out there all the time. And so what is im­por­tant for us to do is make sure that we have the right re­pair pro­grammes in place to ad­dress those is­sues that we’ve iden­ti­fied, as well as a ro­bust in­spec­tion pro­gramme to iden­ti­fy new ar­eas. So for me in terms of that safe­ty as­pect and the in­tegri­ty as­pect is not some­thing that ever re­al­ly stops, we will need to con­tin­ue to have pro­grammes to ad­dress that,” he had said.

In May 2023, sev­er­al house­holds were evac­u­at­ed af­ter a 16-inch trunk oil pipeline rup­tured at Mas­sa­hood Junc­tion. The line was iso­lat­ed and lat­er re­paired.

The Sun­day Guardian was un­able to get da­ta on mop-up ex­er­cis­es and re­lo­ca­tion costs for oil spills.  

Rec­om­men­da­tions not be­ing im­ple­ment­ed

Fol­low­ing the 2013/2014 mas­sive oil spill, a Na­tion­al En­vi­ron­men­tal As­sess­ment Task Force was ap­point­ed to de­liv­er a re­port. The task force de­liv­ered its fi­nal re­port on ‘Rec­om­men­da­tions to Im­prove Oil Spill Pre­pared­ness and Re­sponse’ in June 2015.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that lit­tle to noth­ing has been im­ple­ment­ed from the re­port. It stat­ed that “Sur­veys car­ried out in the Gulf of Paria over many years doc­u­ment an on­go­ing de­cline of the ma­rine en­vi­ron­ment from a num­ber of sources in­clud­ing trace met­al pol­lu­tion.”

A 2019 study by Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go re­searchers Aaron Bal­go­b­in and Natasha Ram­roop-Singh found that fish in the Gulf of Paria pose a can­cer risk when con­sumed.

The Task Force’s 2015 re­port made 9 rec­om­men­da­tions. They were as fol­lows:

1) Pre­ven­tion is the First Line of De­fence–“Avoid­ance of ac­ci­dents re­mains the best way to as­sure the qual­i­ty and health of our en­vi­ron­ment. The rel­e­vant agen­cies and In­dus­try must con­tin­ue to take steps to min­imise the prob­a­bil­i­ty of oil spills. Crit­i­cal to this is As­set In­tegri­ty/In­spec­tion/Pre­ven­ta­tive Mea­sures by Petrotrin and the role that the Min­istry of En­er­gy has to play to en­sure com­pli­ance.”

2) Pre­pared­ness Must be Strength­ened–“Petotrin was not pre­pared for a spill of this mag­ni­tude–nor were the Min­istry of En­er­gy or the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty. It is clear that the plan­ning for and re­sponse to the in­ci­dent all agen­cies were un­equal to the task.”

3) En­hanc­ing Ca­pa­bil­i­ties and Re­sources to Com­bat Oil Spills Through a Struc­tured Na­tion­al Re­sponse Sys­tem–“An in­ci­dent like this in­volves mul­ti­ple com­plex di­men­sions that need to be fac­tored in if to be ef­fec­tive.”

4) Na­tion­al Plan­ning for Oil Spills Must be Im­proved.

5) Re­sponse Ca­pa­bil­i­ties Must be En­hanced to Re­duce En­vi­ron­men­tal Risk–“Oil spills–even small ones–are dif­fi­cult to clean up. Oil re­cov­ery rates are low. Both pub­lic and pri­vate re­search is need­ed to im­prove clean-up tech­nol­o­gy.”

6) Some Oil Spills May be In­evitable–“Oil is a vi­tal re­source that is in­her­ent­ly dan­ger­ous to ex­tract, store, use and trans­port. We there­fore must bal­ance en­vi­ron­men­tal risks with the na­tion’s en­er­gy re­quire­ments.”

7) Leg­is­la­tion on Li­a­bil­i­ty and Com­pen­sa­tion is need­ed–“The Petrotrin in­ci­dent has high­light­ed many prob­lems as­so­ci­at­ed with li­a­bil­i­ty and com­pen­sa­tion when an oil spill oc­curs. Com­pre­hen­sive oil spill li­a­bil­i­ty and com­pen­sa­tion guide­lines and pos­si­ble leg­is­la­tion are nec­es­sary as soon as pos­si­ble to ad­dress these con­cerns.”

8) Trinidad and To­ba­go Should Rat­i­fy the In­ter­na­tion­al Mar­itime Or­ga­ni­za­tion 1984 Pro­to­cols.

9) Stud­ies of the Long-Term En­vi­ron­men­tal and Health Ef­fects Must be Un­der­tak­en Ex­pe­di­tious­ly and Care­ful­ly–“Broad gauge and care­ful­ly struc­tured en­vi­ron­men­tal re­cov­ery ef­fects, in­clud­ing dam­age as­sess­ments, re­me­di­a­tion and re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion are cru­cial to as­sure the even­tu­al full restora­tion of af­fect­ed ar­eas.”

Fines for en­vi­ron­men­tal breach­es in­ad­e­quate

In March 2019, EMA’s Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor Hay­den Ro­mano told the Pub­lic Ac­counts Com­mit­tee on the EMA that the $10,000 fine for en­vi­ron­men­tal breach­es was woe­ful­ly in­ad­e­quate and he called for the breach­es to be crim­i­nalised.

“We need to do the amend­ments to the EM (En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment) Act in terms of en­force­ment so that we give our­selves more pow­er and have, maybe crim­i­nal of­fences in the act,” he plead­ed.

Sev­er­al en­vi­ron­men­tal sci­en­tists told Guardian Me­dia that they are very con­cerned about the long-term im­pact of oil spills on man­groves and fish­eries. They said if there are im­pacts on the man­groves, fish­eries are im­pact­ed be­cause fish and crabs are spawned at the man­groves.

“Is it go­ing to be that af­ter we fin­ish this cos­met­ic clean-up, we just ba­si­cal­ly leave it alone? How se­ri­ous­ly do we take the en­vi­ron­ment? Are we in­ter­est­ed in know­ing what the medi­um-term and long-term im­pacts of these events are? Where is the psy­cho-so­cial as­pect of this whole thing? That it’s af­fect­ing peo­ple?

“From the To­ba­go stand­point and the fish­er­man stand­point, yes, there is an im­pact. The oil, de­pend­ing on the oil, will have dif­fer­ent ef­fects on wildlife and the en­vi­ron­ment on the whole, and by virtue of that, it can have an im­pact on hu­man health,” said one sci­en­tist, who spoke off the record.

A time­line of well-known oil spills in re­cent years:

Au­gust 2010 - Petrotrin pipe leaked oil in­to the Godineau Riv­er

De­cem­ber 2011 - Pow­er­Gen’s bunkered fu­el tanker spills out in­to In­vaders Bay.

De­cem­ber 2014 - The coun­try’s largest ever oil leak - More than 7,550 bar­rels of fu­el leaked from Petrotrin lines in­to the Gulf of Paria

April 2017 - Bunker fu­el seeped in­to the Guaracara Riv­er

No­vem­ber 2017 - Oil spill in Ch­aguara­mas

March 2018 - Leak­age at Cat­shill Field, Moru­ga

Sep­tem­ber 2018 - Oil Spilled in­to Vista­bel­la Riv­er, San Fer­nan­do

No­vem­ber 2020 - Oil Spilled near New Cut Chan­nel in Wood­land by leak­ing Her­itage pipeline

April 2021 - An open Her­itage valve leaks 318 litres of oil in La Brea wa­ter­cours­es

Sep­tem­ber 2021 - Her­itage leak in Pt Fortin

Oc­to­ber 2021 - Her­itage leak in Agapi­to Trace, San­ta Flo­ra

June 2022 - Oil spill near Beach­field, Guayagua­yare

Au­gust 2022 - Leak­age at Ca­roni Bird Sanc­tu­ary

Feb­ru­ary 2023 - Spill at Her­itage’s Fer­ri­er Cir­cu­lar, Guayagua­yare op­er­a­tions

May 2023 - Oil pipeline rup­tures in Fyz­abad, forc­ing mem­bers of four house­holds to be evac­u­at­ed

Ju­ly 2023 - Oil Spills from an off­shore plat­form off Ce­dros

Feb­ru­ary 7, 2024 - Two ves­sels leak oil off To­ba­go af­ter over­turn­ing off of the Cove In­dus­tri­al Park

En­vi­ron­men­tal dis­as­ters im­pact jobs

Fish­er­men: Things have nev­er been the same

Mar­tin, whose name has been changed, has been a fish­er­man since he turned 13 years old. With jagged front teeth, and dark, rub­bery skin worn out from the sun, Mar­tin pos­sess­es a child-like laugh. But the laugh is not as bright as it once was. The wa­ters off Point Sable Beach used to pro­vide a healthy amount of shrimp and fish for its small fish­ing vil­lage, but since the 2013/2014 oil spill, it has nev­er been the same, he said.

“The one five years ago was re­al bad, bad. The grounds are now try­ing to catch back it­self af­ter that. The amount of fish and shrimp that used to be here, it gone down re­al­ly plen­ty. They kill the grounds.

“The place nev­er bounce back full. I go out near Venezuela every day and fish, you know. Right now, we are look­ing to go up Care­nage to fish. It have noth­ing in the South. We are go­ing to camp up there. My wife now quar­relling with me,” Mar­tin said, be­fore con­tin­u­ing to pack his boat for the 90-minute trip. The sand be­low his feet was pat­terned by wavy, black streaks, rem­nants from the last oil spill.

A vil­lager vis­it­ing a fish­er­man friend in a board house low­er down claimed that while some fish­er­men were com­pen­sat­ed for the im­pact, res­i­dents and the com­mu­ni­ty were for­got­ten.

“What I un­der­stand is the agree­ment was that when they done clean the beach, they were go­ing to give them some mon­ey to re­ha­bil­i­tate the area, and noth­ing like that was giv­en. They said they were go­ing to re­ha­bil­i­tate the man­grove, but noth­ing.

“And to this day, when the sea rolls, cer­tain times of the year, the sea will roll and the sand lev­el will go down, and when it goes down, you know that oil is still there, but it is in a pitch kind of form. The oil is still there on the ground,” the vil­lager said.

Fish­er­men in vil­lages fac­ing the Gulf of Paria told sim­i­lar sto­ries.

At Car­li Bay, a group of bare backed young fish­er­men, the sons of oth­er fish­er­men, dis­cussed the day.

“The oil spills come and go, but the fish don’t re­al­ly come out like they used to be­fore.”

“Some birds still get stick up in oil some­times. Pel­i­can with no wings, with de­formed foot and head. All up un­til now,” one of them claimed.

Over at the Clax­ton Bay Fish­ing De­pot, the fish­er­men said things at their fish­ing grounds were ok for now. Strange­ly, they spoke about oil spills some­what ca­su­al­ly.

“In 2014, there was oil in the wa­ter for a few months, then it came and stopped. That al­so hap­pened last year for a month or two and it stopped. A lit­tle thing passed last year, but noth­ing to talk about,” one of them, sit­ting on an over­turned white fish­ing buck­et fac­ing the sea said, while gath­er­ing rope.

“Nah, well, it  have some oil spills down on Ce­dros and La Brea side, but noth­ing here. Noth­ing to talk about. You does see it on top of the wa­ter. Reg­u­lar, you does see it by Petrotrin. Reg­u­lar. Yeah, those oil spills does re­al­ly im­pact us, but it’s not we alone, it’s every­body that it im­pacts,” an­oth­er, with curly hair and deep ac­ne scars, said, be­fore see­ing to an el­der­ly woman in ur­gent need of fish.

To­ba­go fish­er­folks wor­ried

Mo­ri­ah fish­er­man Kester Jer­ry has es­ti­mat­ed his loss­es as a re­sult of last Wednes­day’s oil spill off the coast of the Cove In­dus­tri­al Park at over $20,000.

On a good day, Jer­ry can net a cool $4,000 sell­ing his va­ri­ety of fish.

When the fish are not in abun­dance, Jer­ry makes enough to put food on the ta­ble.

“This oil spill has been a hard blow for me,” Jer­ry com­plained on Thurs­day.

“When I saw the oil spill I had mixed feel­ings. I was an­gry and sad at the same time,” said Jer­ry who al­so does spearfish­ing, snorkelling and beach tours in the sis­ter isle.

Al­ready Jer­ry and ap­prox­i­mate­ly 400 fish­er­men span­ning from Crown Point to Spey­side have been feel­ing the ef­fects of the dis­as­ter along the coast­line.

“This oil has crip­pled To­ba­go’s fish­ing in­dus­try. It has af­fect­ed the fish­er­men 100 per cent.”

A fish­er­man for more than 20 years, Jer­ry said with the start of the Lenten sea­son, he es­ti­mat­ed fish prices would dou­ble in the com­ing weeks.

King fish which fetched $35 a pound ear­li­er this month, Jer­ry said, can cost over $65 for the up­com­ing East­er.

If the oil is not re­moved prompt­ly, Jer­ry said, fish­er­men may have to seek fish from Trinidad’s long lin­ers and fish­er­men “to keep us afloat.”

Even the hote­liers, he said, will feel the im­pact as ac­quir­ing seafood will be far and few be­tween and tourists and vis­i­tors would not be able to en­joy the beach­es.

Jer­ry said he does not feel the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly would com­pen­sate fish­er­men for their loss of earn­ings.

“Since this in­ci­dent, I have been run­ning around be­cause I have a loan to pay.”

Jer­ry has to pay the bank $1,500 each month.

He has re­sort­ed to sell­ing craft items to tourists dis­em­bark­ing on cruise ships to eke out a liv­ing.

“I made a mere $400 with the last two ships. It has been ex­treme­ly dif­fi­cult to sur­vive.”

As for fish­er­men, Jer­ry said, they are be­ing left in the dark as no one is say­ing any­thing.

“Not a word to us.”

Hav­ing viewed the de­struc­tion on the beach first-hand, Jer­ry said: “It can take years for the coast­line to come back to its orig­i­nal state. If you see where they clean al­ready how it look­ing? The oil has de­stroyed the ma­rine park on the At­lantic side, like the pacro, sea eggs and sea whelk are all dead. I don’t know if this is a sab­o­tage or to­tal neg­li­gence or if is a bobol that went wrong. This is the worst I have seen on the coast­line, we nev­er had this in the whole his­to­ry of To­ba­go.”