Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Roodal Mooni­lal says he plans to hold talks with the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) on key en­er­gy mat­ters—among them, the long-de­layed re­moval of hy­dro­car­bon waste still stored at the Stud­ley Park dump.

The waste was placed there af­ter last year’s Feb­ru­ary 7 oil spill, which af­fect­ed 15 kilo­me­tres of To­ba­go’s shore­line. Clean up took about two months and led to the re­cov­ery of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 60,000 bar­rels of oil waste and 23,000 cu­bic yards of con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed ma­te­r­i­al.

Three large pits were dug at Stud­ley Park dump for tem­po­rary stor­age. But soon af­ter, res­i­dents claimed that the oil waste was seep­ing in­to the soil and could soon con­t­a­m­i­nate the en­vi­ron­ment. The THA lat­er con­firmed that test­ing showed there was no con­t­a­m­i­na­tion.

The THA had asked the for­mer gov­ern­ment for fund­ing to prop­er­ly re­move the waste but was told the En­er­gy Min­istry would han­dle it. That nev­er hap­pened.

Mooni­lal said he on­ly re­cent­ly be­came aware of the is­sue.

“I’m aware of this sit­u­a­tion,” he told Guardian Me­dia dur­ing an in­ter­view at the open­ing of Par­lia­ment. “A cou­ple of weeks now since we took of­fice, we be­came aware of that. And I’ve asked the min­istry to do a brief on it for me.”

The min­is­ter said he ex­pects to re­ceive that brief­ing soon. “That I ex­pect to get a re­port by Mon­day or Tues­day. I pre­fer to speak on it when I’ve read the full brief on it.”

Mooni­lal added that he has al­ready be­gun mak­ing con­tact with the THA on this mat­ter and oth­er en­er­gy-re­lat­ed is­sues.

“It’s a di­a­logue with—not the Chief Sec­re­tary per se—but oth­er of­fi­cials of the THA. And they have that and some oth­er [mat­ters],” he said.

Among the wider is­sues on the agen­da is To­ba­go’s in­clu­sion in the coun­try’s en­er­gy de­vel­op­ment plans.

“We want to speak to them about co­op­er­at­ing with our gas-based de­vel­op­ment. We be­lieve that the peo­ple of To­ba­go and the THA, as a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the peo­ple, should be in­volved with us as we plan for­ward.”

Mooni­lal did not give a time­line for when the waste will be re­moved but said dis­cus­sions with THA of­fi­cials are on­go­ing.

The hy­dro­car­bon waste has now been sit­ting at Stud­ley Park for over a year. With the rainy sea­son un­der­way and grow­ing con­cerns from en­vi­ron­men­tal groups, at­ten­tion is once again turn­ing to when and how it will be prop­er­ly dis­posed of.

Mooni­lal said once prop­er­ly briefed, he will ad­dress the is­sue pub­licly.