RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Un­able to suc­cess­ful­ly clamp a leak­ing sub-sea Well S-694 in the Sol­da­do North­fields, Petrotrin of­fi­cials are now mov­ing to en­gage in a cost­ly $10 mil­lion ven­ture to aban­don the leak­ing well in the hope of pro­tect­ing the seas from cat­a­stro­phe.

A source said a team has been at­tempt­ing to use ce­ment and mud to stop the leak which has re­port­ed­ly spewed over 100 bar­rels of oil in­to the Gulf of Paria since Mon­day.

“Petrotrin tried to clamp it but the clamp has failed so they are bring­ing in a rig to do aban­don­ment which means ce­ment­ing the well,” the source ex­plained. He not­ed that the well is re­mote and the out­er cas­ing of the well has con­tin­ued to leak de­spite ef­forts to stop it. The of­fi­cial stat­ed that the aban­don­ment ex­er­cise will cost Petrotrin an es­ti­mat­ed $10 mil­lion but this is usu­al­ly writ­ten off by the Min­istry of En­er­gy so that it is not record­ed in the com­pa­ny’s records.

Petrotrin, in a state­ment on Wednes­day, said on­ly ten bar­rels of oil had leaked in to the sea but sources said at that time about 30 bar­rels were record­ed. Com­pa­ny of­fi­cials said the leak has been con­fined to the im­me­di­ate vicin­i­ty of the fa­cil­i­ty and is be­ing man­aged by re­sponse per­son­nel on site.

Since the leak oc­curred, Petrotrin’s In­ci­dent Com­mand Sys­tem (ICS) has been ac­ti­vat­ed.

Aer­i­al, ma­rine and land sur­veil­lance ex­er­cis­es are on­go­ing and so far there has been no sight­ings of the oil on land.

In an in­ter­view yes­ter­day, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of the EMA Hay­den Ro­mano said a team from the EMA as well as of­fi­cials from the Ma­rine Af­fairs and the Min­istry of En­er­gy vis­it­ed the site and con­firmed that drops of oil were seep­ing from the well.

Ro­mano con­firmed that Petrotrin was mov­ing to aban­don the well and not­ed that the com­pa­ny re­quest­ed a Cer­tifi­cate of En­vi­ron­men­tal Clear­ance (CEC) to do this.

“They asked us if a CEC can be grant­ed quick­ly so the aban­don­ment process could oc­cur as emer­gency work. They want to do the aban­don­ment as quick­ly as pos­si­ble. From all ac­counts it looks like a drip. Our team did not see any patch­es of oil any­where,” Ro­mano said. He not­ed that Petrotrin of­fi­cials said on­ly one or two bar­rels of oil has spilled in­to the sea.

Since the leak was first sight­ed, fish­er­men have been brac­ing for a de­cline in their catch. Pres­i­dent of the Ota­heite Fish Ven­dors As­so­ci­a­tion called on Petrotrin to fix its age­ing in­fra­struc­ture say­ing when­ev­er there is a leak, cus­tomers stay away.

Head of the Ica­cos Fish­ing As­so­ci­a­tion Es­ook Ali al­so said when­ev­er there is a leak, fish stay away.

He called on Gov­ern­ment to ne­go­ti­ate a fish­ing treaty with Venezuela so that the fish­ing com­mu­ni­ty could sur­vive.