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Friday, July 18, 2025

Affected residents collect $2.5m

Petrotrin spends $20m in oil spill clean-up

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20140131

The clean-up of the beach­es from La Brea to Point Fortin has cost the Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny of T&T (Petrotrin) about $20 mil­lion so far, ac­cord­ing to En­er­gy and En­er­gy Af­fairs Min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine.He said more than $2.5 mil­lion was paid in com­pen­sa­tion to af­fect­ed res­i­dents.He spoke at yes­ter­day's post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence at the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter in St Clair.

The US firm, Oil Spills Re­sponse Ltd was con­tract­ed by the com­pa­ny to clean up the nine-mile shore­line since last month. Ram­nar­ine said most of the heavy work was now com­plete and the com­pa­ny was be­gin­ning to "ramp down."Ram­nar­ine dis­missed claims by Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley and pres­i­dent gen­er­al of the Oil­fields Work­ers' Trade Union (OW­TU) that the terms of ref­er­ence for the Na­tion­al En­vi­ron­men­tal As­sess­ment Task Force did not pro­vide for an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the cause of the spill.

The min­is­ter said the work of the task force has not yet start­ed as its ap­proval was on­ly con­firmed by Cab­i­net yes­ter­day.He al­so de­nied claims by Row­ley that he had mis­led the pop­u­la­tion about the spill, and said if Ro­get had any ev­i­dence of mis­con­duct or neg­li­gence by Petrotrin he should take it to the po­lice.Ear­li­er Petrotrin said it was com­mit­ted to trans­paren­cy in its op­er­a­tions.

The com­pa­ny was re­spond­ing to claims by Row­ley and Ro­get that the com­pa­ny was en­gaged in a cov­er-up of the De­cem­ber 17 oil spill."There is no cov­er-up," the re­lease added.Petrotrin said it was fol­low­ing best prac­tice in its in­ves­tiga­tive pro­ce­dure, which dic­tates speed with­out com­pro­mis­ing the prin­ci­ples of nat­ur­al jus­tice.

The com­pa­ny said it had com­mit­ted ex­tra­or­di­nary re­sources to mit­i­gat­ing the eco­nom­ic and en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pacts of the spill.On Wednes­day, Ro­get said the com­pa­ny was en­gaged in a cov­er-up of the cause of the spill. He said the res­i­dents should be prop­er­ly com­pen­sat­ed and its board should be fired.Ro­get re­peat­ed his call for an in­de­pen­dent in­quiry in­to the in­ci­dent, say­ing the com­pa­ny, in an in­ter­nal re­port since 2010, was ad­vised of cer­tain main­te­nance re­quire­ments to pre­vent such spills. He said the rec­om­men­da­tions were not im­ple­ment­ed.He said the union would do all it could to en­sure the spill was prop­er­ly in­ves­ti­gat­ed, and peo­ple should "stay tuned" for the next in­stal­ment from the union. He ruled out in­dus­tri­al ac­tion.


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