No oil spill offshore Guyana -Natural Resources Minister

Minister of Natural Resources Vickram Bharrat said an investigation into reports of a possible oil spill offshore Guyana, found that there has been no leakage.

Speculations of an oil spill first came to the fore following video posts made by a Facebook-based news entity, which said it suspected the spill. The videos showed a substance in the water offshore, in an undisclosed area. Subsequent to the allegations, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said Sunday that it was investigating the claims.

“I think we know that offshore you don’t produce or you don’t extract gasoline or diesel offshore, you extract crude, so what we would have seen is maybe diesel or gasoline, that was probably deposited or leaked from one of the boats transporting cargo or maybe a fishing vessel, but it is definitely not an oil spill,” the minister told DPI on the sidelines of an event on Thursday evening.

Minister Bharrat said the government had engaged US oil and gas giant ExxonMobil and Canadian oil exploration company CGX-oil. Neither of the companies reported spills of any sort.

Meanwhile, EPA had asked that fisherfolk and members of the general public who come in contact with the substance, to take samples of it, as well as coordinates of the area in which it is seen.

At the time of reports, Director General of the Civil Defence Commission (CDC), Lieutenant Colonel Kester Craig had said the CDC was working closely with the entity and the National Oil Spill Contingency Committee. The committee was established by the government to address cases of emergency.