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Friday, February 28, 2025

Heritage investigates source of oil deposits on Cedros shoreline

by

Sascha Wilson
1087 days ago
20220308
Heritage Petroleum, Santa Flora.

Heritage Petroleum, Santa Flora.

RISHI RAGOONATH

Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um is in­ves­ti­gat­ing the source of crude oil de­posits along the shore­line in Ce­dros, caus­ing con­cern amongst vil­lagers and those who catch and sell shell­fish.

Ce­dros coun­cil­lor Shankar Teelucks­ingh yes­ter­day ex­plained that be­tween Thurs­day and Fri­day, crab catch­ers and fish­er­men no­ticed some residue of oil to­geth­er with Can­sorb (a chem­i­cal used in the clean up of oil spills) on­shore be­tween Granville Beach and St Ann’s Bay, stretch­ing for about half a mile.

He said those beach­es are in a re­mote area with no road ac­cess.

Teelucks­ingh said the men con­tact­ed him and he im­me­di­ate­ly gave the in­for­ma­tion to Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um for the com­pa­ny to ini­ti­ate clean-up op­er­a­tions and pin­point the source of the oil.

He said Her­itage dis­patched an in­ves­ti­ga­tion team and a sam­ple was tak­en for oil fin­ger­print­ing to pin­point the source, as there were no re­port­ed leaks in the com­pa­ny’s fields.

“A con­trac­tor was no­ti­fied to do the clean-up op­er­a­tions. How­ev­er, we haven’t seen that clean-up op­er­a­tion com­mence as yet so that crude oil, I think is be­ing cir­cu­lat­ed with­in that area where there is a lot of shell­fish and oth­er ma­rine life re­sid­ing in what we call the red point. There is a reef run­ning out in that area. A lot of peo­ple who catch crabs and conch and so on, make that liv­ing on a dai­ly ba­sis. We don’t know the ef­fects of what it will do to the ma­rine life. That is some­thing we con­tin­ue to suf­fer from the oil com­pa­nies with­in the past and up to now.”

He said the re­sponse time from the oil com­pa­ny and the Min­istry of En­er­gy to these oc­cur­rences was alarm­ing.

Teelucks­ingh said Her­itage has in­di­cat­ed that if the oil does not be­long to them, then it falls un­der the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the min­istry.

“Since they closed Petrotrin, what we con­tin­ue to see is when these oil spills oc­cur, some­times it is not re­port­ed and some­times there is no re­sponse to the ur­gency of clean­ing up the en­vi­ron­ment and try­ing to make back the en­vi­ron­ment user-friend­ly for the peo­ple who use it on a dai­ly ba­sis,” he said.

For­mer Petrotin work­er Tony Be­dassie said the spill is about a mile away from the main Granville beach.

Be­dassie, who fre­quents that area to catch crab and conchs for recre­ation, said, “It was ter­ri­ble day be­fore yes­ter­day and I ask a guy who went down yes­ter­day and he said the tar was on the shore and the tide took it back out, so it would be de­posit­ed some­where else so it may go low­er down the coast.”

He said a lot of vil­lagers fish, catch crab and conch in that area but since the oil de­posits sur­faced there has been an ab­sence of ma­rine life.

“This area is lit­tered with tar, black fine stuff all over and that will cause de­struc­tion to shell­fish and oth­er ma­rine life. You not even catch­ing a fish,” he com­plained.

Say­ing they would reg­u­lar­ly see tar on the shore­line, he said about two weeks ago he saw a lot of tar on the shore­line but not as much as on this oc­ca­sion.

Be­dassie, who worked at Trin­mar for 26 years, ex­plained that Can­sorb is used to break down the oil and sink it to the bot­tom of the sea.

“When it reach­es the shore they sup­pose to clean it up, so they nor­mal­ly col­lect it and then there is a process called biore­me­di­a­tion, where they would treat the oil, break it down us­ing mi­croor­gan­isms and then put it back in­to the en­vi­ron­ment safe­ly. But all that went out with the clo­sure of Petrotrin. So it now it seems that it just spilling and they just dis­pers­ing Can­sorb and they not say­ing any­thing. But, we feel­ing the ef­fects here, it keeps wash­ing ashore.”

Mean­while, the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) has re­ceived no for­mal com­plaint or re­port, ei­ther ver­bal­ly or writ­ten on oil pol­lu­tion on the coast­line in that area.

How­ev­er, the EMA in­di­cat­ed that it would be reach­ing out to its coun­ter­parts and start a fact-find­ing ex­er­cise in­to this is­sue and the re­sults would de­ter­mine the way for­ward.

Her­itage in­di­cat­ed that a re­sponse would have been is­sued, but none was forth­com­ing up to press time.

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