Minister of the Environment and Housing Romauld Ferreira responded to the backlash he’s gotten in the wake of Tuesday’s comment outside Cabinet, where he said “one goat and three birds” were affected by Equinor’s oil spill in Grand Bahama. 

Environmentalists argued that the minister did not take the matter seriously. 

“I was in the process of giving an update as to what happened at Equinor and persons, whatever agenda they have, whatever motive they have, they did what they did,” Ferreira said yesterday, while defending his comment.    

“What they did was they took a snippet when I gave an update on wildlife that was impacted. We got that from Equinor.  That doesn’t change.” 

The minister contends that the real issue is that the video clip, which circulated on social media, mentioned nothing of the fact that the ministry met with Equinor and a number of other international groups to address the matter among other important points about the oil clean up.

“We met with officials from the United Nations, the Organization and Commission for Humanitarian assistance, the European Union.  We met with officials from the coast guard.   We met with executives from Equinor and they met with senior officials from the Ministry of Environment and Housing, the Department of Forestry, the BEST Commission and the Department of Environmental Health Services,” Ferreira said. 

“They gave us an update and that’s what I did when I went to Cabinet when I stopped and spoke to reporters and I explained to them what we had done.” 

“I explained to them that Equinor had quadrupled their staff, but of course that wasn’t in the video clip.

“I explained to them that 6,000 barrels of oil had been recovered equating to about 250,000 U.S. gallons of crude oil, but that wasn’t in the video clip.”        

Nearly two million barrels of crude oil or 75 million gallons of oil was reportedly spilled from Equinor’s oil facility during the passage of Hurricane Dorian.