There is con­cern that dis­as­ter may be brew­ing as the leak­ing pipeline that spewed oil in­to the New Cut Chan­nel and God­in­uea Riv­er over two weeks ago is now seep­ing in­to the sur­round­ing wet­lands.

As a team of jour­nal­ists ac­com­pa­nied mem­bers of the South Oropouche River­ine Flood Ac­tion Com­mit­tee to the oil spill site off the La For­tune Pluck Road in Wood­land yes­ter­day, a se­cu­ri­ty guard ap­proached and pumped his shot­gun.

He in­formed the teams that they could not ac­cess the area.

De­spite this, aer­i­al sur­veil­lance footage showed a pool of oil gath­er­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly 100 me­tres from the riv­er bank.

A trip down the New Cut Chan­nel showed spots of oil and a sheen still float­ing around.

Two weeks ago, fish­er­men in the area dis­cov­ered it on their way to the Gulf of Paria. Yes­ter­day, the wa­ter bub­bled in an area where three pipelines owned by Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny Ltd en­tered the riv­er.

Dur­ing Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um’s vir­tu­al riv­er tour on Mon­day, Health, Safe­ty, Se­cu­ri­ty and En­vi­ron­ment man­ag­er Shyam Dyal said cleanup crews re­moved 90 per cent of the oil from the riv­er.

Dyal said that when com­pa­ny of­fi­cials looked at the ecosys­tem, they did not see free oil on the sur­face of the riv­er. He said there were wildlife and healthy man­grove through­out.

But dur­ing yes­ter­day’s vis­it to the riv­er, com­mit­tee pres­i­dent Ed­ward Mood­ie said heavy and per­sis­tent rains last week washed the oil on­to the banks. Mood­ie said the cleanup crews did not use ab­sorbent ma­te­r­i­al to re­move the oil from the soil and on­ly en­gaged in mi­nor leaf pick­ing of the stained man­groves.

“Most of the riv­er is still con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed. The bank is still con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed with oil. We got some calls yes­ter­day morn­ing that oil was ac­tu­al­ly spread­ing through the la­goon; the wet­land area just to the West of where the oil spilt in­to the riv­er from the same line. They brought in se­cu­ri­ty and pre­vent­ed any of the work­ers from us­ing their cam­eras. There were strict or­ders. 

The Oropouche Wet­land is home to caimans and sev­er­al species of birds and fresh­wa­ter fish­es. Many res­i­dents make a liv­ing from sell­ing conch, oys­ters and crabs they har­vest from the man­groves. The New Cut Chan­nel is home to the Su­dama Teerath where Hin­dus of­fer prayers and me­tres aways is a berthing site for fish­ing pirogues.

Mood­ie is con­cerned that if the leak of not plugged soon, oil can spill in­to the near­by  “Duck Pond Riv­er” which he said is the on­ly fresh­wa­ter riv­er in the area.

“So 200 feet away and I think they are bor­der­ing on a dis­as­ter un­less they do what is right.”

Oropouche West MP, Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo ac­cused Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um of con­tin­u­ing to ne­glect its age­ing in­fra­struc­ture.

In a me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day Tan­coo said, “It is time for the ex­ec­u­tive man­age­ment of Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um to step out of their ivory tow­ers in Port-of-Spain and come and wit­ness first-hand, the ef­fect their ne­glect and in­com­pe­tence has caused cit­i­zens and the en­vi­ron­ment,” Tan­coo said.

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um’s Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Unit for a re­sponse. The com­pa­ny said it would is­sue a me­dia re­lease, but there was none up to press time.