By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

Environmental activists yesterday urged the Government to upgrade the country’s oil spill contingency plan following the 30,000-gallon Exuma leak, adding that The Bahamas must move from “a panicked” to a controlled response.

Rashema Ingraham, Waterkeepers Bahamas executive director, told Tribune Business the last time she could recall revisions being made to the plan was 2011 - more than a decade ago - despite the movement of petroleum-based products through the country’s shipping lanes on an almost daily basis.

While a “ruptured hose” was being blamed for diesel fuel leaking into waters off Georgetown, she added that issues of liability and who is responsible for environmental clean-up and the associated costs need to be better defined in Bahamian laws and regulations.

Multiple Cabinet ministers and government officials raced to Exuma yesterday to assess the oil spill and its impact, but Ms Ingraham argued that a better response would be to ensure the necessary equipment to contain then remediate the incident was already in The Bahamas with trained personnel able to use it effectively.

“The last oil spill contingency plan revision was in 2011. That’s been some time now, and that really needs to be given some attention sooner rather than later because we have so many petroleum products moving through our waterways on a regular basis,” Ms Ingraham told this newspaper. “Just think about everything that has happened between that timeframe and now.

“This really brings to the forefront for the Prime Minister and his Cabinet to again look at oil industry reform, and not only because we have experience with oil drilling and marine and terrestrial spills in The Bahamas.” Those spills include the loss of 558,000 barrels of oil when the tank roofs at Equinor’s South Riding Point storage terminal in Grand Bahama were compromised when Hurricane Dorian struck the island in early September 2019.

“It definitely needs upgrading,” Ms Ingraham said of The Bahamas’ plan for dealing with major oil spills, “and it also needs to point who should be responsible for paying for the spill. It definitely should not be the Government of The Bahamas. The Government should look at putting a levy in place on those moving oil through the country to make them more responsible for their transhipment.”

Besides identifying who is liable for clean-up, remediation and the associated cost, she added that The Bahamas needs to completely overhaul how it reacts to oil spills. “We need to move away from the panicked response to these situations to one where we have a more controlled response,” Ms Ingraham told Tribune Business.

“This is so we know, based on the spill and the response, what type of resources need to be executed right away. Having men in suits rush over to look at a spill is not the right response. The right response is to have the equipment in place to contain the spill initially, and that equipment needs to be in country.”

Other environmental activists yesterday argued that the Exuma spill strengthens the case for banning oil exploration and drilling in Bahamian waters, although there is no link at all between the latter activity and what happened in Georgetown.

Joe Darville, Save the Bays’ chairman, said the leak of diesel fuel destined for Bahamas Power & Light (BPL) was “another warning” given the potential consequences for Exuma’s “pristine” waters and environment - the very assets that attract the tourists and homeowners which drive the island’s economy.

“It’s a catastrophic disaster because, similar to Equinor, there is no contingency plan available,” he argued. “As far as I know, does Exuma have a plan to deal with a spillage like this? I would say no. It will be up to Mother Nature to deal with this catastrophic event.

“It’s another event to show we have no business thinking about drilling for oil in our waters. It would be a total disaster.” However, photos and reports from Exuma yesterday suggested that the oil spill appears to have been reasonably well contained with both the authorities and private sector moving quickly to remediate the impact.

Casuarina McKinney-Lambert, the Bahamas Reef Environment Educational Foundation (BREEF) head, added: “This is certainly a reminder that there are serious risks involved with fossil fuel use and transportation and, certainly, exploration, because there’s so many unknowns when it come to the latter. The message here is that we have so many better options.”