A Venezuelan NGO documents 199 oil spills between 2016 and 2021

Caracas, 25 Mar The Venezuelan Observatory of Environmental Human Rights said this Friday that between 2016 and 2021 it documented 199 oil spills in Venezuela, which, it assured, “in the “vast majority” of cases, were not reported by the authorities. “In the period 2016-2021, there were reports of 199 oil spills, including a gasoline spill. There is a growing trend in the number of spills, from 12 in the first two years to 68 in 2021,” the organization said in the report “Oil Spills in Venezuela”, published on its website. He indicated that during that period spills considered “punctual”, from a single charge, and continuous, were reported, which occur due to prolonged discharges over time. “In the case of continuous spills, the news obtained reports varying durations from days to years,” he said. The observatory explained that for this report it searched the internet for news published in national and international media about oil spills in Venezuela, journalistic investigations and civil society technical reports, user reports on Twitter with emphasis on those made by investigators. “Throughout the revised period, spills affected 15 entities in the country. More than 90% of those reported occurred in the states of Anzoátegui, Monagas, Zulia, Sucre, Falcón and Carabobo,” he added. These results, he continued, are consistent with the geographical location of the main facilities and production areas of the oil industry in the Caribbean country. He also said that 97 per cent of the recorded spills occurred within Venezuela and the rest came from events in neighboring countries such as Trinidad and Tobago, which affected the nation's territorial spaces. “On the other hand, in the vast majority of cases, neither the state-owned oil company PDVSA nor the national authorities provided information on the characteristics of the spill, nor its possible impacts. Likewise, in no case did they assume responsibility for them”, he stressed. For the NGO, this situation indicates that the Venezuelan State is “ignoring” its obligations under the human rights framework, as well as national laws and international agreements and commitments on environmental management and conservation. The observatory recommended the re-establishment of policies, technical standards and procedures aimed at the prevention, control and mitigation of oil spills with a human rights perspective. “The damage caused by oil spills violates human rights. Among them, the rights to a decent life, to health, to a clean and healthy environment, to food, to clean drinking water, to an adequate standard of living and to work,” he said.