En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal says the re­cent oil spill along the Mara­bel­la Bayshore orig­i­nat­ed from a com­pro­mised sec­tion of an aged 12-inch trunk pipeline, and he has called for a com­pre­hen­sive re­view of the coun­try’s pipeline in­fra­struc­ture.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia af­ter at­tend­ing an en­er­gy sym­po­sium at Cara Suites Ho­tel yes­ter­day, Mooni­lal said that be­cause of the age of the pipeline, there could be more leaks in the fu­ture if it is not re­placed.

“We be­lieve the source of the spill comes from an aged pipeline. We are now re­quest­ing a crit­i­cal as­sess­ment of the pipeline in­fra­struc­ture,” he ex­plained. The spill, which oc­curred ear­li­er this month near the New City com­mu­ni­ty in Mara­bel­la, prompt­ed emer­gency clean-up ef­forts and tem­po­rary re­lo­ca­tion of res­i­dents.

Mooni­lal said Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um, the op­er­a­tor of the line, has since clamped the leak and ini­ti­at­ed site re­me­di­a­tion and re­cov­ery op­er­a­tions.

“They were able in three hours to clamp the pipeline. It’s a 12-inch trunk line. They were able to clamp it,” Mooni­lal con­firmed.

He said work is pro­gress­ing steadi­ly.

“We are fol­low­ing that and mon­i­tor­ing it on a dai­ly ba­sis. Min­is­ter Ernesto Ke­sar is in­volved in that and he is su­per­vis­ing on be­half of the min­istry.”

Mooni­lal said near­ly all clean-up op­er­a­tions are com­plete. “I’m hap­py to in­di­cate that we are al­most 90 per cent com­plet­ed in terms of our full cleanup ac­tiv­i­ty.” He re­port­ed some con­t­a­m­i­na­tion to lo­cal veg­e­ta­tion but not­ed vis­i­ble progress.

“If you no­tice, off the high­way op­po­site the ground­wa­ter area, a lot of work has been done to clean up that area and to pro­tect the veg­e­ta­tion it­self,” he re­vealed.

In the New City area, he said, re­sponse teams used booms and ab­sorp­tion tech­nolo­gies to con­tain and re­move the oil-wa­ter mix­ture. The week­end oil spill forced the re­lo­ca­tion of dozens of res­i­dents, who were moved to the Roy­al Ho­tel in San Fer­nan­do. “We have had 57 to 60 res­i­dents at the Roy­al Ho­tel in San Fer­nan­do, where I’m hap­py to say that they are all in a good mood. I vis­it­ed them on Sat­ur­day, and the chil­dren were play­ing in the swim­ming pool,” Mooni­lal said.

He added that the chil­dren had re­sumed school, and sup­port ser­vices con­tin­ue.

He not­ed that all the res­i­dents are ex­pect­ed to “in a day or two.”

Mooni­lal said no se­ri­ous health is­sues have been linked to the spill.

He not­ed that the Min­istry of En­er­gy is ex­pect­ed to con­tin­ue mon­i­tor­ing re­me­di­a­tion and to as­sess risks to oth­er aged pipelines across the coun­try.