RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Al­though Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed is com­plet­ing the clean-up of an oil spill which con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed two beach­es in the south­west­ern penin­su­la, Ce­dros coun­cil­lor Shankar Teelucks­ingh says the source of the spill has not yet been iden­ti­fied.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Teelucks­ingh said there was spec­u­la­tion that the spill could have orig­i­nat­ed from a sump tank used in oil plat­forms.

“If there is residue, it goes down in­to the sump tank and this sep­a­rates the wa­ter and oil. Then it pumps back the oil to the pro­duc­tion tank and that over­flows some­times if there is ex­ces­sive rain. We do not know for sure if this is what caused the spill but Her­itage is con­tin­u­ing its in­ves­ti­ga­tions,” Teelucks­ingh said.

Over 40 fish­er­men have been af­fect­ed by the spill.

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, Her­itage said it had re­ceived re­ports of hy­dro­car­bons along the Bonasse and Bam­boo beach­es in Ce­dros on Tues­day.

Her­itage said its Oil Spill Re­sponse Team and the In­ci­dent Man­age­ment Team (IMT) were mo­bilised and have been re­spond­ing ac­cord­ing to the com­pa­ny’s in­ci­dent re­sponse pro­to­cols. 

“Clean-up ac­tiv­i­ties have com­menced and are ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed to­day (Thurs­day),” the com­pa­ny said. 

Her­itage al­so said the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty, the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries and oth­er op­er­a­tors in the area have been no­ti­fied of the re­port. 

The com­pa­ny al­so said it would con­tin­ue to mon­i­tor the clean-up ef­forts and pro­vide up­dates as re­quired.