One month af­ter an oil spill was dis­cov­ered in the Guayagua­yare area, Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed held talks with res­i­dents to ad­dress its ef­fects.

The meet­ing was held on Thurs­day at the Fer­ri­er Road Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre.

In a state­ment, Her­itage said it opened the meet­ing by ex­press­ing re­gret for the spill and promised to clean up and re­ha­bil­i­tate the af­fect­ed ar­eas as best as pos­si­ble.

The com­pa­ny said most of the con­cerns raised by the peo­ple of Guayagua­yare were around health, safe­ty and well-be­ing and en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pact.

“Al­so dis­cussed was com­pen­sa­tion, and fu­ture com­mu­ni­ty so­cial pro­grammes,” it said.

In the mat­ter of health and well­be­ing, Her­itage not­ed the con­cerns and re­stat­ed its com­mit­ment to re­ha­bil­i­tate the af­fect­ed ar­eas and con­tin­ue with post-clean-up mon­i­tor­ing.

It added that air and noise qual­i­ty test­ing will con­tin­ue, and the com­pa­ny will al­so fa­cil­i­tate on­go­ing pe­ri­od­ic med­ical checks for res­i­dents who were em­ployed in the clean-up ef­forts as well as for oth­er af­fect­ed mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty.

Health Safe­ty and En­vi­ron­ment (HSE) train­ing will al­so be of­fered to mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty soon.

Her­itage has al­so planned a fol­low-up meet­ing with rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the com­mu­ni­ty to dis­cuss the de­vel­op­ment and roll-out of so­cial sus­tain­abil­i­ty pro­grammes that meet the unique needs of the peo­ple of Guayagua­yare.

“The process for claim­ing com­pen­sa­tion was al­so shared with the at­ten­dees,” Her­itage said.

The spill was first re­port­ed on Feb­ru­ary 11, 2023.

Her­itage said it im­me­di­ate­ly iso­lat­ed and re­paired the leak­ing pipeline and en­gaged the ser­vices of spe­cial­ist con­trac­tors and 85 res­i­dents to con­duct clean-up and re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion work.

Thus far, over 7,000 bar­rels of flu­ids com­pris­ing 95 per cent wa­ter and five per cent hy­dro­car­bons were re­moved from five col­lec­tion points along the river­bank and trans­port­ed to the Guayagua­yare Tank Farm.

Her­itage said the ex­er­cise was 60 per cent com­plet­ed and clean-up work is con­tin­u­ing apace.

In at­ten­dance at the meet­ing were Rush­ton Paray, MP for Rio Claro/Ma­yaro; Wen­dell Perez, Coun­cil­lor, Ma­yaro/Guayagua­yare; David Law, Coun­cil­lor for Rio Claro South/Cat’s Hill, rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the Guayagua­yare Vil­lage Coun­cil and Guayagua­yare Or­toire Ma­yaro Fish­er­folk As­so­ci­a­tion (GOM­FA) along with the wider com­mu­ni­ty. Her­itage was rep­re­sent­ed by Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer Ar­lene Chow, and mem­bers of the Lead­er­ship and In­ci­dent Man­age­ment Teams.

Ac­cord­ing to Mr Randy Ha­gley from Her­itage, a promi­nent mem­ber of the com­mu­ni­ty thanked the com­pa­ny for its will­ing­ness to ad­dress the is­sues and in­di­cat­ed the sig­nif­i­cance of the meet­ing as it was the first time that any state-owned oil com­pa­ny had a gen­er­al meet­ing with the peo­ple of Guayagua­yare. Her­itage pledged to con­tin­ue strength­en­ing the re­la­tion­ship be­tween the com­mu­ni­ty and the com­pa­ny.