Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um is look­ing for the source of an oil spill in the Gulf of Paria that has af­fect­ed scores of Ce­dros fish­er­men and ap­prox­i­mate­ly 40 fish­ing ves­sels.

Siparia Deputy May­or Shankar Teelucks­ingh said the oil de­posits be­gan wash­ing ashore on Tues­day af­ter­noon and by yes­ter­day, the oil spill was ob­served at the Fuller­ton shore­line. 

One of the af­fect­ed fish­er­men, Mar­lon Parmel, said the oil sud­den­ly ap­peared around 1 pm and cov­ered about four miles from Bonasse to the Ce­dros jet­ty. He con­tact­ed Her­itage and Teelucks­ingh, the lo­cal gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tive for the area, and a clean-up crew from the en­er­gy com­pa­ny ar­rived at the beach yes­ter­day morn­ing and be­gan mop-up op­er­a­tions.

Parmel said on­ly a few fish­er­folk went to sea yes­ter­day be­cause they were “liv­ing day to day and had no choice.” He said sev­er­al boats be­came stained with tar and oil be­cause they could not get them out of the wa­ter fast enough.

“Last time they gave us some de­greas­er about four to five days af­ter and it stained the boat. The de­greas­er wasn’t mak­ing sense,” he said.

Her­itage rep­re­sen­ta­tives were ex­pect­ed to meet with the af­fect­ed fish­er­men yes­ter­day.   

Teelucks­ingh said the fish­er­men were con­cerned about go­ing back out to sea.

“We are await­ing Her­itage at this point to clear that end. If it is an in­stal­la­tion or sub­sea line that is leak­ing, or if it is a land in­stal­la­tion that is leak­ing in the Guapo Riv­er. These are some of the sce­nar­ios that we are think­ing about at this point in time, so the fish­er­men are await­ing the clear­ance from Her­itage so that they can con­tin­ue to ply their trade,” he said. 

Of­fi­cials of Her­itage were con­tact­ed for com­ment on the sit­u­a­tion but there was no re­sponse up to press time.