An oil spill has dumped black sludge on beaches along Venezuela’s northwestern coast and damaged fishing in the area, residents and environmentalists said Monday.
In Puerto Cabello, near the El Palito refinery where an oil spill occurred last year, the sandy beaches were marred by tar-containing sludge, AFP journalists saw.
Environmental researcher Eduardo Klein reported in a post on X that also included satellite images that the oil spill has so far caused 225 square kilometers (87 square miles) of damage.
State oil company PDVSA did not want to comment on the situation yet.
“We have been practically unemployed for eight days now because we cannot fish,” fisherman Antonio Giusti told AFP.
“There is still oil” off the coast of Puerto Cabello, he added.
Last year, when the El Palito refinery suffered a spill, PDVSA said it was “not heavy crude oil, but a discharge of hydrocarbons, wastewater or effluents that ended up in the marine environment near the coast.”
Venezuela, which has one of the world’s largest oil reserves, saw production fall from three million barrels per day more than a decade ago to 400,000 barrels per day in 2020 due to corruption, mismanagement and US sanctions.
Production is currently back to around one million barrels per day, but many experts say Venezuelan equipment is in poor condition.
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