Fishermen hang up nets after oil spill

ICACOS Fishing Association president Esook Ali said most of the fishermen from his district, as well as neighbouring Chatham, have been forced to hang up their nets and stop fishing for the rest of the year.

This, he said, was due to an oil spill on Thursday, off Platform 9 in the Soldado Main Field.

“While there is no sighting of oil on the shores in Icacos, fishermen fear that the oil is in the waters and they are not taking the chance to venture out at sea,” Ali said. He said fishermen were also frustrated because they could not afford super gas, since regular was recently taken off the market, and opted to cut their losses and close off for the year.

Cedros councillor and former Petrotrin worker, Shankar Teelucksingh, commenting on the oil spill said because of cross currents at Icacos the oil can surface anywhere, and this was also why the fishermen were not taking the risk of going out to sea. “They are left at a disadvantage at this time where they are called upon to provide for their families for the holiday season,” Teelucksingh said.

Heritage Petroleum Company, the successor to Petrotrin, he said, was only measuring what substance could been on the surface. On Friday, Heritage said the spill was minimal and estimated the amount to be less than five barrels of oil.

“Three to four hundred feet long and one hundred and twenty feet wide of oil was sited circulating in Gulf of Paria and this cannot amount to just five barrels," Teelucksingh said.

Spillage, he said, was reported in Soldado Main Field and Southwest Soldado. Shankar said fishermen in Chatham reported seeing oil within the Soldado East Field, and claimed this proved the spillage was more than five barrels of oil. He said chemicals used to contain the spill would cause oil to sink but it would resurface in due course.

Heritage has said it had activated its oil spill contingency plan and relevant personnel went to the area of what turned out to be a minor spill.

However, Shankar said Petrotrin always had the expertise to deal with such incidents. “In the recent past when the Couva Marine well had blown off, it was Petrotrin's responsibility to get that well under control. The experts from Petrotrin and Trinmar were able to carry out the clean-up action and the leak was contained,” he said.

He called on Energy Minister Franklin Khan to disclose who would be responsible for the national emergency response for oil spills and disasters in the energy sector with the closure of Petrotrin.

“As far as we know all the experts trained to handle these issues have been sent home at this point in time,” he said.

Teelucksingh said there was aged infrastructure that has been left unattended in the Gulf of Paria, and also called on Khan to address this.

Shankar also said he was concerned about oil production. “Since the closure of Trinmar and Petrotrin a record (low) 9,000 barrels of oil is produced as compared to before when 22,000 barrels were produced per day," he claimed.

Calls to the Energy Minister went unanswered yesterday.