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Energy Minister Roodal Moonilal defends delayed disclosure of May 1 offshore oil spill amid Stuart Young scrutiny
Energy Minister Roodal Moonilal defends delayed disclosure of May 1 offshore oil spill amid Stuart Young scrutiny
By Aurax Desk | May 14, 2026 | 2 min read
In a heated exchange in Parliament, Energy Minister Dr. the Honourable Roodal Moonilal defended his ministry’s handling of a May 1 offshore oil spill, saying it was a small, tier-one incident that did not require a public advisory, while opposition MP Stuart Young pressed him on delayed disclosure and communication with Venezuela under the watch of House Speaker The Honourable Jagdeo Singh.
Dr. the Honourable Roodal Moonilal, Minister of Energy and Energy Industries, defended his handling of a May 1, 2026 offshore oil spill and his communication with Venezuela during a tense sitting of Parliament.
Opposition MP Stuart Young, SC, questioned why the public was only alerted on May 10 and whether Moonilal had contacted the Minister of Energy of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela “to provide him with the details and information” about the spill, which Young said had negatively affected Venezuela. He framed the issue as one of delayed disclosure and cross-border accountability.
Moonilal, describing the query as an “ill advised, ill conceived question,” said the complaint rested on “several fallacies.” He stressed that the spill was officially categorized as a “small spill,” a tier-one incident, and said such events do not trigger public advisories or press releases under existing protocols.
He said there is “no policy or protocol for the Ministry of Energy to issue a public advisory or a press release in dealing with small spills,” noting that between 2019 and 2021 there were 76 small spills and “the Ministry of Energy never issued one press release.” Public statements, he said, are reserved for larger tier-two or tier-three spills that affect shorelines, fisherfolk and coastal communities.
Young pressed the Venezuela angle, asking whether Moonilal had been “in touch with the Minister of Energy of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela,” and, in a pointed follow-up, whether he even knew his Venezuelan counterpart’s name.
The Honourable Jagdeo Singh, MP, Speaker of the House, intervened, questioning whether that line of inquiry was appropriate and instructing Young to move on to his next supplementary instead of pursuing whether the minister knew the foreign official’s name.
Young then asked whether Moonilal had issued any direct correspondence from himself to the Venezuelan energy minister. Moonilal welcomed the opportunity “to deal with that,” and said the communique from Venezuela about the spill was transmitted through diplomatic channels and “was not sent to the Minister of Energy of Trinidad and Tobago.”
He explained that his ministry received the Venezuelan communique on the evening of May 9 and maintained that within hours of receiving it, the Ministry of Energy issued a statement. That response, he said, was sent to “His Excellency, Ambassador of Venezuela,” again via diplomatic channels rather than directly minister to minister.
As tempers rose, Speaker Singh admonished members for what he described as early-morning unruly conduct, rejecting what he called “unbridled obstreperousness” and reminding the House of the standards of behavior expected in the chamber.
The clash underscored sharply different views on transparency and communication in environmental incidents. Young sought to cast the ministry’s actions as slow and insufficiently direct, particularly toward a neighboring country allegedly affected by the spill. Moonilal argued that he followed long-standing protocols for small spills and that his ministry moved quickly once the Venezuelan communique arrived.
While Moonilal emphasized that small, tier-one spills routinely occur without public statements, political scrutiny in this case was heightened by the asserted impact on Venezuela and the timing of the government’s May 10 acknowledgment. The underlying disagreement remained unresolved: whether the absence of a public advisory before that date was a failure of transparency or a routine application of existing rules for minor offshore incidents, and whether communications channeled through diplomats, rather than directly between ministers, were sufficient in the circumstances.
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