In Zulia, PDVSA spills more oil than it produces. In the region, thousands of active and inactive oil and gas wells and an extensive range of pipelines lay obsolete or corroded. Today, the company’s western division produces less than 83,140 barrels a day, while residents cry out for help in the face of the oil that spills along their coasts, beaches and streets
“The oil industry joined the progress of Venezuela when it began production on July 31, 1914, at Zumaque I, the well that began the era of commercial production in the country.” This sentence, written on a podium at one of the facilities of the state-run company PDVSA in Zulia state, shows the great importance of the region in the national economy. But 106 years after the first blowout, the state shows a sharp drop in production while oil spills on its coasts and streets.
The residents of the Zulia region denounce the inability of Petróleos de Venezuela to contain the oil spills, especially in the Lake Maracaibo basin, that affect the ecosystem, fishing, and tourism, as well as the health of fishermen and indigenous people who live in the palafitos (traditional stilt houses).
«Mr. President, if you get to watch this video, you will see the way we live every day. We have spent 15 years dealing with oil spills. President Nicolás Maduro, we ask you for help as a friend and as a revolutionary. As our commander Chávez once said, ´Unity makes strength´. We need your presence, look at how we live. I am a 41-year-old fisherman, I live in this county. Look at the boats, look at the shores of the beach as they have been lost. Fishing is our life, “said fisherman Juan Rodríguez from El Horcado, Lagunillas county, on the eastern shore of the lake.
While washing his fishing nets to remove the oil, Juan denounces through a video published on social media that no political authority or the state oil company itself has been present to address the critical situation that has left hundreds of fishermen at risk of losing their only source of income.
“We need your help because no county, state authority, or PDVSA has reached out to us (…) Please send a commission to supervise. Because we survive from fishing, we fish to eat and to support our families, ”said fisherman Juan Rodríguez on behalf of the 113,000 registered fishermen in the region.
But not only Lagunillas suffers from the ravages of oil spills. The state of Zulia is home to some 15 to 17 thousand active and inactive oil wells, of which more than 5,000 are located in Lake Maracaibo; more than 14 thousand kilometers of buried pipes and 200 pump stations, in addition to superficial pipelines. Continuous leaks in the network have reached the municipalities of Baralt, Valmore Rodríguez, Cabimas, and Santa Rita; but also areas across the Rafael Urdaneta bridge, including the San Francisco municipality and Maracaibo, especially the Santa Rosa palafitos.
Today, thousands of oil leaks come out from the obsolete, corroded, and perforated pipes due to the lack of preventive maintenance, reaching an extension of 10 to 40 kilometers along the shore of the lake, as well as 30 meters wide oil stains in some areas.
Also, 20 shrimp farms in the area that use water from the lake see their production affected whenever there is an oil spill in that body of water. The owners of the largest shrimp farms have to invest money in filtering the water, but the smallest ones find it difficult to do the same, so they are forced to stop operating.
Unfortunately, the leaks have not only remained in the water, but they have also reached the land, affecting agricultural activities in this region, which covers an important part of the consumption of milk and meat in the country.
Oil spills have reached the countryside and affected the pasture for cattle, especially in Cabimas, Ciudad Ojeda, La Concepción, and other areas of the eastern coast. In these areas, incidents have occurred at oil stations, and heavy rains have brought the oil to the streets of the towns.
PDVSA shows an infrastructure in poor condition due to lack of investment and maintenance, a situation that worsened with the US oil sanctions in 2018. This has resulted in hundreds of incidents such as oil overflow in tanks, leaks in pipelines, fires, and the complete halt of operations in refineries. On the other hand, the drop in oil production in the last seven years, from 2.5 million to 407,000 barrels a day (b/d) according to the OPEC November 2020 report, has been felt with much more in Zulia, which was once a traditional oil region in Venezuela and the world.
PDVSA western division, to which Zulia belongs, used to produce over 2 million b/d before 2000 when the total reached 3.2 million b/d. As production decreased, the figure went from 1.5 million b/d in 2001 to just 83,140 b/d in November 2020. Today this volume may be lower.
“Unfortunately, oil production in Zulia has fallen to volumes never seen before. Many factors have influenced this situation, but one element is fundamental: the creation in 2009 of a decree-law that expropriated a group of companies in the sector and reserved to the Venezuelan State all related activities. This meant that all of the services that private companies used to provide were transferred to the hands of PDVSA. With time, this brought a collapse in the industry and the operation of all oil fields, especially those in the state of Zulia, “said MP Elías Matta, president of the Energy and Petroleum Commission of Juan Gauidó’s National Assembly.
In his opinion, “that was a fatal blow” to more than 100 front-line companies in Zulia that provided all kinds of services, mainly maintenance, to all fields and wells both in Lake Maracaibo and on land.
«The entire production system of PDVSA Occidente came to a halt. That could never be recovered. Also, we must remember the more than 20,000 trained workers fired from the oil industry. Another element was corruption. Let us remember that Luis Parada, director of PDVSA Occidente, was found to be involved in an extensive network of corruption through Bariven, ”Matta stressed.
At present, there is practically no natural gas production in the region, which is an important element for crude oil production.
“Due to the lack of maintenance, all the fields on land have been abandoned and looted; part of the pipes have been stolen and that has generated spills in cities like Cabimas and Lagunillas”
Elía Matta, Member of Parliament
Edgar Chacín, geologist and former PDVSA employee, highlights that the main source of the dwindling oil production in Venezuela is the state Zulia, given that some 336 thousand barrels per day are produced in the eastern part of the country, specifically in the states of Anzoátegui and Monagas.
“Zulia is no longer synonymous with oil, and the Barinas-Apure basin, which is still in production, has always had a low contribution to the country’s oil output”
Edgar Chacín, geologist and former PDVSA employee
“Today, the oil fields in the state of Trujillo produce more than those in the state of Zulia. These wells were discovered by Exxon Mobil. The most important are Ceiba and Tomoporo”, adds the regional director of Gas Energy Latin America, Antero Alvarado.
PDVSA’s western division is made up of four areas: Maracaibo Lake, Western Lake Coast, Eastern Lake Coast, and South Lake-Trujillo. According to figures obtained by sources from the oil industry, the production of Sur del Lago-Trujillo represents 32% (37,210 b/d) of the total, while production from Maracaibo Lake reaches just 9.3% (15,170 b / d).
Other experts in the oil sector point out that most of the fields in the region date back about 70 years, so, after years of mismanagement, their production has collapsed. They explain that this type of field requires the use of special methods such as natural gas injection, among others, but there have not been enough personnel or resources to maintain their optimization or to reactivate them.
No environmental management
Environmental restoration becomes a challenge for the country and PDVSA since the Venezuelan state-run company has reached the point where it pollutes more than it produces, affecting large areas of natural ecosystems across the country.
Ausberto Quero, director of the Civil Association for the Conservation of Lake Maracaibo and Fundación Vida Verde (Funvive), explains that the way the lake is shaped makes it very prone to the accumulation of oil, impacting, even more, the local vegetation and wildlife.
“Let us remember that this area is made up of the gulf, the bay, the strait, and the lake itself. Most of the spills occur in the center of the lake and with the effect of the tide (which goes counterclockwise) they end up on the eastern shore. We must prevent spills from reaching the coast so that they do not affect natural biodiversity “
Ausberto Quero, engineer and conservationist
Mr. Quero highlights that the water of the lake hosts a group of fish, plankton, and other microorganisms that are part of the natural interconnection of food chains also known as the trophic chain. Likewise, any incident also affects the bed of the lake where demersal fauna lives.
«It also affects the mangrove. Vegetation plays an important role in the shores of the lake because it acts as a sink that reduces greenhouse gases. It also serves as special protection since it prevents coastal erosion, “explained Quero, who is also a member of the World Commission on Protected Areas.
Mr. Quero agrees that fishermen have been affected by the spills, but also draws attention to tourism that, although in decline due to the pandemic, has also suffered in the last three years the effect of beaches and coastal landscapes covered in oil.
“The spills in the lake are recurrent, and residents in Zulia seem resigned to seeing the spills from anywhere along the lake because there is no control,” said the director of the Center of Engineers of the state of Zulia.
Venezuelans wonder why oil spills have become more frequent at times when t oil production is at historically low levels. Quero highlights the need for PDVSA to have a trained, consolidated, and updated environmental management. “Along with the 3 million b/d drop in oil production, PDVSA’s care for the environment has also declined in the last 20 years. The lack of resources and professional and qualified personnel are some of the causes of this.
Other experts argue that the mismanagement of such an aging infrastructure with few new assets took its toll and created the chaos we witness today. Some call the western division the “monster with a thousand heads”, since there are hundreds of pipes in the lake one on top of the other, and some facilities date back 100 years. On the other hand, the operation in Lake Maracaibo, which was historically the stronghold of the industry, was not well managed in the last 20 years and has caused a large number of problems that have impacted the electricity sector, the petrochemical sector, and the domestic gas industry, among others.
This extensive offshore infrastructure requires numerous equipment and time for maintenance or repair, which PDVSA has obviously failed to conduct. Getting to these facilities takes three to four hours, they are very far away, and keeping an eye on them is difficult. Also, all sailing operations in the lake were expropriated in 2003, including transportation by boat, barges, and all types of watercraft. Now the situation of both the personnel and the equipment is critical. The number of boats operated by PDVSA dropped from 400-500 boats to just about 60.
Many regret the waste of money during the boom years that did nothing to solve incidents in the industry or improve the situation and that was rather invested in paying for other actions more political than operational in nature. For two decades, mafias of all kinds emerged, half solutions became common practice, and the great exodus of personnel was encouraged. Solving all the company’s problems will now take years.
For Ausberto Quero, it is a priority for PDVSA to offer its personnel environmental training on how to prevent oil spills or control them to mitigate their harmful effects, as well as to keep enough equipment. It is also necessary to have an environmental sensitivity map, to identify to match the location of the facilities with the most fragile environments and thus develop emergency plans for each particular case.
“And above all, there must be constant supervision and preventive maintenance”
Ausberto Quero, engineer and conservationist
MP María Gabriela Hernández, president of the Commission on Environment, Natural Resources and Climate Change of the Guaidó-led National Assembly, indicated that this parliamentary body has identified major urgent environmental concerns in the country, almost all involving the operations of the national oil company: Lake Maracaibo, Lake Valencia, the coasts of Falcón, Carabobo and Anzoátegui -all home to PDVSA refineries-, the venting of natural gas and the accumulation of coke in the east, and the mining arc, besides the illegal constructions in the national parks.
«In the case of Lake Maracaibo, it has been greatly affected by the oil industry. The bed of the lake is filled with pipes, many of them abandoned, neglected, or poorly maintained. Some are leaking oil permanently. In this area, it is difficult to determine where a spill is coming from because the leaks are continuous”
María Gabriela Hernández, Member of Parliament
In her opinion, all that PDVSA culture of preventing both work-related and operational accidents was lost, as well as the planning to remedy the incidents. She recalled that all effects on the environment are effects on life, citizens, marine life, birds, and the ecosystem that provides food.
“This is not just a problem for the State, it is also a problem for citizens, and for which we must make decisions on time and join the global trend to overcome the era of fossil fuels, to design public policies towards the green economy to ensure sustainability and respect for the environment and citizens, “she said.
Her commission at the National Assembly has sent official letters to different public organizations in the country; however, they have not received any response from the Ministries of the Environment and Oil, as well as PDVSA and Inparques. “But there have been some indirect responses and some type of reaction to some specific events that we have denounced”
The MP highlights that the State is obliged to register any environmental damage every year and keep a record of compliance with both sustainable development and particular development objectives of the Paris Treaty on climate change.
“The Treaty of Paris requires each year the States parties – including Venezuela – to present an inventory of the emissions they are generating and what they are doing to reduce them, in addition to the impact of spills and logging in protected areas, but we perform very bad on those subjects, “she explained.
The harsh reality on the streets
In August and September 2020, something unusual happened in Cabimas. Oil also gushed from water pipes, which permeated the streets of the city, surprising residents.
Cabimas is the second largest and most populated city in the state and the fourteenth largest in the country. Despite its endemic poverty and the heat -excessive even for the torrid state of Zulia-, it was one of the first places in the world where oil and gas were produced at an industrial scale.
Nearby there is an artificial island built by PDVSA, consisting of an oil platform just off the southern coast of Cabimas. According to videos published on social media and georeferencing through satellite images, it was possible to observe and identify oil spills both on the coast and in its streets.
This happened on K Avenue between Churuguara and Paraíso Streets, a long block where the most dramatic footage was taken. Nearby there is a private hospital and a whole urban network of several residential neighborhoods. This area is located approximately one mile away from PDVSA’s oil tanks.
“Oil spills are now more frequent. It is true that PDVSA, by the nature of its business, is a polluting company, but it had never reached these levels. In September 2020, we had access to videos provided by councilor Héctor Vargas and by other people, that showed how oil gushed out onto the streets of Cabimas, something that had never been seen before, ”says journalist Jesús Urbina, coordinator of Transparencia Venezuela in the state of Zulia.
Urbina and his team have been monitoring oil leaks in the region since 2019, and the investigation reveals that the spills are more frequent and intense now and affect larger areas.
“We found leaks near the eastern shore of the lake and many spills in Lagunillas, Ciudad Ojeda, Bachaquero, San Timoteo (…) in March, August, and December 2019. Also, at least three oil platforms and flow stations sank in the lake. The high frequency of oil spills means that in some cases it is not easy to determine where they come from. Let us remember that the lake is home to many oil facilities”.
Urbina highlights that at the end of September 2019, after an inspection carried out by environmental groups, experts, and members of Transparencia Venezuela, spills of about 500 square kilometers were reported in the lake, affecting the water and coastal towns that live off rudimentary fishing in the lake.
“This has no precedent in the country, neither in Anzoátegui nor in the Golfo Triste oil spill in 2020. This was enormous”
Jesús Urbina, Transparencia Venezuela
One of those so-called water towns is Ceuta, located in Baralt county, southeast of Lake Maracaibo. Palafitos abound in this area, houses built on stilts over the surface of the lake. Poems and gaitas (traditional music of the Zulia state) have been composed for Ceuta and the beauty of its landscape, but today the residents of a dozen palafitos are affected by the humanitarian emergency, the Venezuelan economic crisis, and the environmental pollution.
The coordinator of Transparencia Venezuela in Zulia affirms that PDVSA’s “enormous neglect” is the cause of large spills, and at the same time the state-run company has failed to deploy contingency plans. Only in the case of Cabimas, the oil company and the city government stepped in to barely cover the spilled oil with sand, according to information from the local newspaper La Verdad.
“Since 2019, research has shown a high correlation between corruption and environmental damage. The permanent tracking of corruption within the oil industry has yielded very serious conclusions about the operational readiness of a crumbling PDVSA and the joint companies, as a result of the looting, distortions, and opacity of public information. From the evidence, we understand that this has a direct impact on the environmental record. It is evident that the environmental concerns are not taken into consideration, because we can see how the spills continue and it seems not to be in the interest of the industry, “said Urbina.
Another major impact of oil pollution is the effect on the health of the population. Rashes and other skin diseases arise as a result of contact with crude oil and the lack of drinking water in the area.
“The lack of water has forced the population, especially children, to bathe in the lake, which has generated health problems to the fishing communities and the PDVSA workers who collect the spill, due to skin contact with traces of crude oil. There is evidence in the communities and healthcare centers of an increase in rashes on the back and other skin diseases”, says engineer Ausberto Quero.
Journalist Jesús Urbina points out that witnesses talk about fishermen with the skin stained by oil because they do not have water to bathe, and they usually show welts on their skin.
Fishermen told newspaper La Verdad that the oil in the lake almost boils between 1:00 and 3:30 in the afternoon, and whoever enters suffers third-degree burns. «It rips your skin. It is smoky, flammable, and creates a kind of vapor,” said a San Francisco resident.
Today, this is the reality of a population affected by the pollution coming from PDVSA, a company that arrived in the area a long time after the towns were formed and fishermen settled in Bachaquero, Valmore Rodríguez county, just next to the spot were PDVSA would later build dock number 1.
Translated by José Rafael Medina
