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Sunday, July 20, 2025

Wildlife affected by Vistabella oil spill

by

Kevon Felmine
2485 days ago
20180930

The habi­tat along the Vista­bel­la Riv­er is once again un­der at­tack as oil stretch­es across sev­er­al kilo­me­tres of wa­ter and the flank­ing man­groves.

San Fer­nan­do May­or Ju­nia Re­grel­lo said yes­ter­day that he had con­tact­ed En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries Min­is­ter Franklin Khan about the is­sue yes­ter­day. Khan, in turn, has asked Petrotrin to be­gin search­ing for the source of the oil.

The con­t­a­m­i­na­tion was re­port­ed to the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA), which said that it had re­ceived a re­port of the con­t­a­m­i­na­tion around 10 am yes­ter­day. The EMA’s Emer­gency Re­sponse and In­ves­ti­ga­tions (ERI) Unit con­duct­ed an in­ves­ti­ga­tion to iden­ti­fy the source of the spill and it was iden­ti­fied as Petrotrin’s Mos­setville Man­i­fold, which is a buried high-pres­sure gas and oil line. So far, Petrotrin has not quan­ti­fied the spillage.

The EMA said that up to yes­ter­day evening, Petrotrin was en­gaged in clean-up op­er­a­tions and had shut off the line and de­ployed booms to en­sure that oil did not reach the coast.

How­ev­er, when a Guardian Me­dia team walked along the riv­er bank yes­ter­day morn­ing, sev­er­al cat­fish were seen swim­ming away as the oil made its way in­to the Gulf of Paria. Crabs were al­ready cov­ered by the oil. Based on checks at dif­fer­ent parts of the riv­er, the oil spill was present be­tween the San Fer­nan­do By­pass and the riv­er mouth.

Res­i­dent Eveli­na Glas­gow said she first re­alised the pres­ence of the oil be­tween 7 pm and 8 pm on Fri­day when she got a burn­ing scent. By yes­ter­day morn­ing, it was even worse. “You can’t eat, you can’t sleep, you’re on­ly in­hal­ing oil. It makes us sick and weak and it gives us headaches. My head has been hurt­ing me since last night. We can’t cook or leave any­thing open. I find the au­thor­i­ties should come and clean it up now,” Glas­gow said.

An­oth­er res­i­dent said oil in the riv­er was not strange, as there was a com­pa­ny close by that dumps used prod­ucts in the riv­er. But Re­grel­lo said it ap­peared to be crude oil, which was con­cern­ing since res­i­dents fish in the riv­er.

“What I was made to un­der­stand is that fish­er­men do come here and fish for tilapia and cat­fish. You know shark and bake is a pop­u­lar de­light around this time, so peo­ple come here and do their fish­ing and they are sup­pli­ers. I’m a bit tak­en aback by that,” Re­grel­lo said.

“The Pub­lic Health (De­part­ment) has to come and do an in­ves­ti­ga­tion here and see what is go­ing on with this riv­er on how san­i­tary it is in terms of eat­ing.”


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