Venezuela experienced the worst ecological disaster in its recent history, the Morrocoy oil spill. A group of students traveled to the scene to register the damage and collect testimonies. This article tells the story
The day the water turned black
These have been sad days in Morrocoy National Park. At a time when the beaches should be packed with holidaymakers, fish and plants are dying and the water is stained with oil. The once famous beaches of western Venezuela look now gloomy.
The reason: the biggest ecological disaster in recent history. 25 thousand barrels of crude oil were spilled into the sea from the El Palito refinery, causing serious damage to the region’s ecosystem. According to the National Assembly, the damage could extend for more than 50 years. The response of the international authorities and organizations has been total silence.
Faced with the inaction of the authorities, several environmental organizations and local people have tried to mitigate the impact of the spill. However, there is little they can do since the damage extends for tens of miles along the coast of Carabobo and Falcón.
A group of students traveled to the coast of Carabobo to bypass the official censorship and register the damage. In this article, we will tell their story and the testimonies they collected, not before making a recount of the conditions of the facilities in state-run oil company PDVSA and the risks to the environment that they entail.
PDVSA, an environmental bomb
For a long time, Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) was a reference in industrial safety. Accidents were rare, spills were almost non-existent, and safety regulations were followed. Thanks to Chavismo’s talent to destroy, all that is over.
Only the remains of one of the largest oil producers on the planet are left today. Rickety pipes, abandoned facilities, dozens of inoperative drills, and workers fleeing in disarray. The situation is dire for a company that used to produce 3.4 million B/D back in 1998, but today produces a mere 300 to 400 thousand. The state of Zulia is an extreme case; from 1.5 million B/D in 1998, it went to just 11.9 thousand B/D, a decrease of 99 percent. This is the result of years of divestment and lack of maintenance.
The sanctions imposed by the United States on PDVSA aggravate the situation since they make it difficult for the state-run oil company to get clients abroad. Crude oil storage is at full capacity, with filled up depots and several offshore tankers loaded with millions of barrels.
According to Congressman Luis Stefanelli, “Oil spills due to PDVSA’s precarious conditions occur all across the country. Right now a tanker with a highly toxic cargo is sinking in the east of the country, ”.
With the refining capacity in historical lows, a diminishing number of clients, and warehouses at full capacity, PDVSA is becoming an ecological bomb that can be catastrophic. Oil spills are recurring and refinery waste falls into the sea without any treatment.
El Palito spill, an ecological disaster
For years, Venezuela has imported fuel due to the poor state of the country’s refining park. Until the imposition of sanctions in January 2019, the United States was the main supplier. After that moment, PDVSA began to find it difficult to find other providers. With the sanction against Rosneft Trading in March 2020, Venezuela was left without oil operators, giving rise to the most serious fuel shortage that the country has experienced since the 2003 oil strike.
Faced with this contingency, Maduro extracted nine tons of gold (about 500 million dollars) from international reserves to buy fuel from Iran and pay for repairs in the refining park, according to Bloomberg.
The goal was to reactivate the refineries as soon as possible. According to Argus, a Mahan Air plane made between 20 and 25 direct flights from Tehran to Punto Fijo between April and May to transport equipment and personnel needed to repair the refineries.
With many problems, PDVSA managed to partially reactivate the refining park, producing gasoline on a marginal basis. This pyrrhic fuel production produces hazardous waste that is not adequately treated at the time of its final disposal into the environment. “Every time the catalytic unit is turned on at El Palito, there is a waste leak that will end up destroying Morrocoy National Park,” said Congressman Luis Stefanelli during an interview with César Miguel Rondón.
The constant attempts by the state-run oil company to reactivate the El Palito refinery caused a failure and the subsequent oil spill, as confirmed by Professor Eduardo Klein to El Carabobeño. The spill, which occurred between July 19 and 22, extends over 100 square miles, an area slightly smaller than Lake Valencia in central Venezuela.
The oil spill occurred because the heat exchanger systems became contaminated with oil as operators tried to increase fuel production, a refinery manager told Argus. An estimated 25,000 barrels of oil were spilled into the Caribbean Sea, but it was not until Sunday, August 2, that fishermen reported the damage.
Another waste spill occurred on August 8 from the same refinery, this time from the oxidation lagoon. El Pitazo reported that, given the impossibility for the oxidation lagoon to process the waste from the refining activity, it goes directly into the sea whenever the pond overflows.
Students mobilize to report on the damage
On August 10, a group of students from the University of Carabobo and Arturo Michelena University traveled to the areas of El Palito, near the city of Puerto Cabello, to document the damage caused by the spill on the coast of Carabobo.
Gabriel Cabrera, a law student at the University of Carabobo, tells Politiks that the first thing they saw upon arrival was a strange coloration of the sea, similar to a rainbow, that forms when water is mixed with some hydrocarbons. Also, the waves formed streaks of oil along the beach, which filled the stones and sand.
Poverty is rife in the area around El Palito refinery, with many people relying on fishing, a sector that according to data from Venezuela’s Central Bank (BCV) has fallen by more than 90 percent since 2013. Without a doubt, this spill was a severe blow to the people living on the coast.
In the Playa Blanca area, a group of 400 fishermen denounces that the fishing industry has collapsed in the last month. Oil clots extend 12 miles into the open sea, killing fish that could serve as food. “That is not diesel, that is oil, I had to struggle to take my hand out of there,” said a fisherman who gave his testimony.
Other fishermen showed their fishing nets, which are supposed to be white, covered in black oil stains.
On August 27, the group traveled again to the affected area, this time to Falcón state. They reported that the spill is less noticeable in this state, oil streaks form along the shore and the oil layer in the sand bubbles up. Cabrera claims that the tourist corridor was also affected.
A relevant finding was that PDVSA has not followed international protocols to clean the beach. Instead, they hired local people to clean it up, who took shovels and dumped lumps of oil from the sand onto the road, located some 300 feet from the beach. More than a month later, lumps of stained sand are still visible at the Boca de Yaracuy tollbooth located at Falcón state limits.
International efforts
In order to denounce the violation of economic and social rights against the local population in the affected areas, the students delivered explanatory letters to five international bodies: the diplomatic mission of the European Union, the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, the embassy of the United Kingdom, and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR).
“A large part of the population of the State’s coastline is affected by negligence on the part of the Venezuelan State regarding the operations of the state-run oil company,” says the letter addressed to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, signed by 37 civil organizations, including the National Federation of Law Students (FENEDE) and the Center for Activism and Democratic Development.
Ecocide in progress
“Another day, another environmental disaster signed by PDVSA.” Reuters journalist Marianna Párraga used this phrase to report on the order given by Bonaire to the state-run oil company to relocate its oil away from the storage tanks on the island, due to the serious ecological risk that it entails.
News like this is an everyday occurrence in the country with the seventh greatest biodiversity on the planet, where 21.76 percent of the territory is devoted to national parks and natural monuments.
Until recently, the major environmental concern used to be the Orinoco Mining Arc, an area where gold is extracted to finance the Venezuelan dictatorship. As of today, oil disasters have become more and more frequent. Just to mention a couple of examples, there is the sinking of the Nabarima tanker in the Gulf of Paria, which runs the risk of spreading 1.3 million barrels of oil into the Caribbean Sea; or the oil spills that mix with water and flood the city of Cabimas, as denounced by journalist Lenin Danieri on September 2.
Few international activists speak out in the face of these disasters. On the Morrocoy spill, famous activist Greta Thunberg did little more than mentioning the incident in a tweet: “A major oil spill has occurred off the coast of Venezuela, but very little official information has been released.”
Faced with the collapse of the State and an apathetic leadership that only cares about clinging to power, it is positive that students and civil society organizations denounce these kinds of situations, which are often difficult to report due to the lack of phone and internet service in rural areas.
The Morrocoy oil spill has been the worst ecological disaster that Venezuela has suffered in recent years. However, as long as the survival of Chavismo in power depends on the deepening and exploitation of its extractive economic activities, the environment will remain endangered.
There will be no environmental damage that stops the thirst for power of the Chavista regime. As long as it is in power, there will always be an ecocide around the corner. The shores, beaches, rivers, jungles, and forests of Venezuela are not safe: they perish day by day under the sign of a revolution that, dressed in red, has dyed them black.
Translated by: José Rafael Medina
