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Wednesday, July 23, 2025

Marabella residents complain: Oil almost gone but fumes remain

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20140812

Even though most of the oil has been cleaned from the Guaracara Riv­er, res­i­dents are still com­plain­ing of pun­gent hy­dro­car­bon fumes.

On Ju­ly 28, caused by the Ju­ly oil leak from one of Petrotrin's tanks (MP6) at the Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery.

Last night they were plan­ning to hold an emer­gency meet­ing at the Mara­bel­la Recre­ation Ground. They were al­so ex­pect­ed to meet with pres­i­dent gen­er­al of the Oil­fields Work­ers' Trade Union An­cel Ro­get.

One res­i­dent, Gillian Wick­ham, said al­though no oil was vis­i­ble on the riv­er, the smell of the fumes was con­tin­u­ing to cause dis­tress to res­i­dents.

"I re­al­ly wish I could get out of here. I have been liv­ing on the river­bank all my life. Dur­ing the day the smell is not high, but at nights we can­not stay in the house. My broth­er has to walk out the road and sit on a neigh­bour's steps un­til the air clears," Wick­ham said.

She added that Petrotrin staff were con­tin­u­ing to dis­trib­ute clean­ing prod­ucts.

An­oth­er res­i­dent, Trevor Jor­dan, said they were con­tin­u­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions with Petrotrin.

"We are still see­ing black oil stains on the veg­e­ta­tion but most of the oil from the riv­er is gone," Jor­dan said.

On Sun­day, Min­is­ter of En­er­gy Kevin Ram­nar­ine, vis­it­ed the re­fin­ery.

Petrotrin, in a state­ment, said most of the heavy oil had been re­cov­ered from the Guaracara Riv­er and clean-up work had start­ed along the river­bank. Clean-up was al­so go­ing on in­side the re­fin­ery yes­ter­day.

An in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the leak is on­go­ing. Nine staff mem­bers, in­clud­ing two man­agers and the vice pres­i­dent of re­fin­ing and mar­ket­ing, Ma­do Bachan, have been sus­pend­ed pend­ing an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the in­ci­dent.


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