The Gulf of Mexico is not the only body of water suffering from a massive oil spill. President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela has been relentlessly criticized by local officials in the state of Zulia for not effectively cleaning up huge oil slicks in Lake Maraicabo for the past month.

Some oil slicks – some up to 40 kilometers long – started to appear on the lake’s surface more than a month ago.

The Wall Street Journal reports that, “Ramirez said that more than 2,100 people are now working to clean up the spill, which he said was likely caused by leaks from the maze of old decaying underwater pipelines that carpet the bottom of the lake. A couple weeks ago, PDVSA sent out a brief statement saying 50 workers and local fishermen are being assigned to scoop up oil at the lake.”

A basin in western Venezuela, Lake Maraicabo is one of the world’s largest centers for oil production, and major foreign-oil corporations have been pumping crude from under and around the lake for almost a century. Oil spills, shipping traffic and other industry-related wear-and-tear have departed from the heavily-polluted lake.

Ramirez’s remarks on Wednesday came as local politicians in the state of Zulia have been pleading for weeks for the national government, led by President Hugo Chavez, to clean up the mess.

The head of Zulia state’s Legislative Council, Eliseo Fermin, an opponent of Chavez government, informed Dow Jones Newswire Tuesday that an emergency needs to be declared for the lake.

To read the entire article from the Wall Street Journal, link here:

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