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A hydrocarbon spill flows from the now dilapidated El Palito refinery, the only active one in Venezuela. The kilometers of Golfo Triste beach in the State of Falcón, in the western part of the country with the largest oil reserves in the world, are an oil slick that has reached the Morrocoy National Park, a cove of islets with reefs and mangroves, of about 320 square kilometers, one of the favorite destinations of Venezuelans. A week after the sea began to bring the hydrocarbon remains to the coast and the effects of the spill began to be seen, the state oil company, PDVSA, has not yet referred to the case. However, there has already been a telematic meeting in which dozens of researchers, environmentalists and volunteers participated to take actions in defense of Venezuelan ecosystems.
The dimensions of the spot were calculated by the marine biologist and ecologist Eduardo Klein from Tasmania, Australia. The researcher at the Remote Sensing Laboratory of the Simón Bolívar University has collated the evolution of the spill by satellite images, which began to spread on July 22. “According to what we have determined, the spill is still in development. The stain of 22 suggests that there were 25,000 barrels of oil in the water that day on the Morón coast ”. Through his Twitter account, he has been documenting the evolution and the path of the spill. By July 26, what he calls "the language of death" occupied 260 square kilometers, enough to cover the city of Valencia. Crude is still out of control.
“In relative terms, it is not such a large volume, if we compare it with other large global oil spills. What makes it particularly serious is the affected area: it is a current that carries the oil towards the Golpe Triste and towards the Morrocoy National Park. There are already reports of impacts and the presence of hydrocarbons reaching reefs and mangrove lagoons. What is not visible, and may be more serious, is that part of these hydrocarbons precipitate and go to the seabed ”, explains oceanographer Juan José Cárdenas, associate professor at the Instituto de Tecnología del Mar at the Universidad Simón Bolívar.
All refineries have containment mechanisms. In a country with a collapsed oil industry, almost inoperative due to mismanagement and corruption, forced to import gasoline from Iran and producing at its lowest levels, the environmental damage control systems are not working either. In the state oil company, in the hands of Chavismo, industrial and ecological accidents in recent years have been frequent. There have been two important ones in the last decade: a spill in the eastern part of the country, on the Guarapiche River of the Monagas State in 2012 that contaminated the water source of a city, and the Amuay outbreak, in the same year, which left more of 50 dead and hundreds of wounded and on whose causes all investigation has been blocked. The oil spilled from El Palito has traveled more than 100 kilometers from the original leak due to the wind and currents, which indicates that barriers were not placed in time to collect it.
Deborah Bigio, director of Fudena, an NGO that promotes environmental conservation, is also concerned about what is not seen. This organization, together with the Ministry of Ecosocialism, has undertaken days of cleaning up the oil that accumulates on the beaches of Chichiriviche. In that small coastal town, Fudena has a work station, where neighbors worried about what the waves were bringing began to arrive a few days ago. "We are all locked in by the pandemic, but when the remains and large oil stains began to be seen, we had to get out," says the biologist. Up to 200 volunteers a day have raked through the sand to try to clean up the oil. But, Bigio acknowledges, this activity literally consists of plowing in the sea. “All the hydrocarbon, which we still don't know what it is, percolates. The affectation is inevitable ”. Undertaking the necessary environmental impact studies will also be another challenge in the midst of the coronavirus crisis, which is escalating infections in the South American country to more than 1,000 cases a day.
The reefs and mangroves that are part of the Morrocoy National Park are the most worrying because they are fragile structures and home to other species. Oysters that stick to the stems of the mangrove, fish such as liza, which are of great commercial interest, spawn on these roots. In the corals crustaceans and benthoic organisms huddle together. Photographs of the area show the stems stained with black tar. Near the place of impact is the Cuare Reserve, home to local birds and a regular stop for migratory species in the region. “Oil affects marine life by blocking the gills of fish and crustaceans from breathing. By perching on reefs it kills coral polyps and that will affect fishing and tourism. Mangroves and reefs are natural structures that form the coastline, stabilize the coastlines, ”says Cárdenas.
In 1996 a massive death killed 90% of the corals in Morrocoy. The causes of the phenomenon on which there are two hypotheses have not been established: sudden changes in temperature or contamination by wastewater. Then only nine of the 26 coral species that had been cataloged in the area remained. An investigation by the biologist Ana Yranzo, carried out through a program of the London Zoological Society, found in 2020 that 24 years later new colonies had risen on dead structures. The corals that had been recovered in Morrocoy now suffer a new attack.