Like most Trinidadians of my ilk, I have looked on at the happenings in La Brea with fascination and a certain amount of morbid delight. Imagine! We have "we own oil spill." Now we don't have to look at CNN or worse, Fox, for such visual titillation. We have it right here. If it's big enough maybe the news channels could come down here like they did in 1990 for five days and we could make international news! What confusion! On the one side the government, mainly in the form of the PM, stating early o'clock that "everything under control," before disappearing into the wilderness of New York on another mission of mercy. Other ministers involved have suddenly become scarce.
Then you have Petrotrin, spinning top for all it is worth, trying to convince everyone, day after slippery day, that they are on top of the situation.Eleven oil spills but two of them might be sabotage? What happen to the other nine? Well, suspend some workers, which immediately sends the message that workers are responsible. Shouldn't the entire team on duty be suspended, supervisors and managers included?After some weeks, it became apparent that there were various types of oil spills. There were spills on land and spills under the sea.There were spills from bunkers and spills from ships and spills from leaking pipes. There was something called a tier one oil spill which means there must be something called a tier two and maybe a tier three? Where does it end?There is even, according to one private company, something that called an "oil sheen" which is not an oil spill but which might be called an oil spill by hasty reporters!