Oil spill challenge

IN an unwelcome reminder of the damaging oil spill on the south-western “heel” of Tobago, when an overturned, abandoned barge spilled thousands of gallons of oil into the sea, threatening beaches and marine life, Heritage Petroleum is working to clean up a spill along the Cedros coastline reported on October 16.

The spill has affected Cedros, a fishing village, and councillor Shankar Teelucksingh reports that at least 40 boats have been affected, describing their condition as "contaminated."

On October 18, the company said that after three days of clean-up, there were no "visible" hydrocarbons offshore (sub-sea oil spills don't entirely rise to the surface), but did not clarify the cause.

In July 2023, oil washed ashore at Cedros, grounding 175 fishermen and their boats, primarily affecting Bonasse Village.

Just a month before, Heritage teams were at work in Penal, cleaning up the damage from a land-based spill when a four-inch oil transfer line leaked hydrocarbons into floodwaters, affecting several homes and an estimated 20 acres of marshland.

A 16-inch trunk oil line ruptured in Fyzabad in May 2023, leaking oil for the second time in less than a year on the property of families living close to the line.

A February 2023 spill in Guayaguayare required a deforestation exercise to clear a path to repair the line and begin clean-up efforts. How was it inspected?

It's disturbing to note that these spills don't match the destructive spill of December 2023.

That spill leaked more than 7,500 barrels of bunker fuel into the Gulf of Paria.

Petrotrin, Heritage's predecessor company, claimed that two of the leaks were acts of sabotage, but the others were likely the result of a lack of institutional maintenance and oversight. Fishermen from La Brea to Cedros were affected, with widespread destruction of marine life.

While Heritage may be cited as one of the government's success stories after the closure of Petrotrin, it has inherited massive liabilities from that company’s transmission system, mostly wells past usable life long before the shutdown.

A 2003 evaluation of the Petrotrin tank system described the condition of most of the oil storage tanks as poor and out of alignment with international standards. Twelve were described then as critically deficient.

Heritage may now be facing a situation of triage, in which it may only be able to cost-effectively and strategically replace a small fraction of these deteriorating lines while retiring others.

The company's transmission-line system is a series of accidents waiting to happen, and it's negligent to wait, hope, and patch.