An oil tank rup­tured at Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um's base in Point Fortin Sun­day evening, cas­cad­ing 628,000 bar­rels of salt wa­ter mixed with oil rem­nants in­to three com­mu­ni­ties.

Up to late this evening, ar­eas of the New­lands com­mu­ni­ty were still un­der wa­ter.

Due to the strong fumes from the oil slick, sev­er­al res­i­dents be­gan ex­pe­ri­enc­ing headaches, nau­sea and dizzi­ness.

Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um ac­ti­vat­ed it's emer­gency re­sponse, in­clud­ing its am­bu­lance and fire ser­vices, to as­sess the sit­u­a­tion and ren­der aid and med­ical as­sis­tance to af­fect­ed per­sons. Work­ers were al­so said to trapped on the com­pound which was pre­vi­ous­ly known as Trin­mar.

Guardian Me­dia was told that last week the com­pa­ny hired con­trac­tors to pump sea wa­ter in­to the tank as part of a hy­drotest to as­cer­tain the in­tegri­ty of the tank be­fore it was used to store oil. How­ev­er, the tank burst this evening send­ing the oil slick gush­ing in­to the com­pound, road­ways and com­mu­ni­ties.

Point Fortin May­or Kennedy Richards Jr told Guardian Me­dia that sev­er­al res­i­dents com­plained about feel­ing un­well and have been re­strict­ed from us­ing open flames as a safe­ty pre­cau­tion.

As a re­sult, he said they can­not light their stoves.

Richards said he was al­so ex­pe­ri­enc­ing dizzi­ness af­ter an hour and half in the af­fect­ed ar­eas.

While the wa­ter has sub­sided con­sid­er­ably, some ar­eas of New­lands were still un­der wa­ter.

It is un­clear if res­i­dents had to be evac­u­at­ed or tak­en for med­ical treat­ment. This is a de­vel­op­ing sto­ry and will be up­dat­ed as more in­for­ma­tion comes to hand.

Flooding at Heritage's Point Fortin compound on Sunday.

Her­itage State­ment

The com­pa­ny is­sued a state­ment on the mat­ter on Sun­day evening.

"To­day, Sun­day 07 June 2020, at around 5:55 PM, Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed was in the process of con­duct­ing an en­gi­neered hy­dro test to as­sess the in­tegri­ty of Tank 27 at the Ad­ven­ture Tank Farm in Pt Fortin when there was a fail­ure of the tank wall caus­ing a leak.

The leak caused the sea wa­ter, utilised in the hy­dro test, to flow out of the tank, over­flow­ing the bund­ed area and in­to the road­way and the near­by At­lantic LNG com­pound.

The sea wa­ter would al­so have caused the over­flow of resid­ual oil from the sump pit lo­cat­ed at the tank farm. The wa­ter sub­sided with­in two-hours, and clean-up op­er­a­tions are cur­rent­ly on­go­ing.

There have been no re­port­ed in­juries as a re­sult of this in­ci­dent and Her­itage is con­tin­u­ing to mon­i­tor the sit­u­a­tion. Her­itage’s In­ci­dent Com­mand and HSSE teams are on site and man­ag­ing the sit­u­a­tion."