The Min­istry of Works and Trans­port on Fri­day is­sued a re­quest for pro­pos­als for the sale of the Gulf Stream barge, which in Feb­ru­ary, cap­sized off the south­ern coast of To­ba­go, in the vicin­i­ty of the Cove Eco In­dus­tri­al and Busi­ness Park To­ba­go, dis­charg­ing thou­sands of bar­rels of fu­el oil that pol­lut­ed some of the is­land's beach­es.

Ac­cord­ing to the no­tice on the min­istry's web­site, the sale is be­ing or­gan­ised on a “as is and where is,” ba­sis and the award to the suc­cess­ful ac­quir­er "will be ex­e­cut­ed in ac­cor­dance with the pre-de­fined eval­u­a­tion cri­te­ria." The cri­te­ria is out­lined in the so­lic­i­ta­tion doc­u­ment, which is avail­able from the min­istry.

“Ten­der­ers are ad­vised that the open­ing of ten­ders will be con­duct­ed via Mi­crosoft Team,” the min­istry said, adding that “late ten­ders will not be con­sid­ered in any cir­cum­stances."

The Min­istry of Works and Trans­port al­so point­ed out that it "does not bind it­self to ac­cept the low­est or any oth­er ten­der and re­serves the right to can­cel the present no­tice in its en­tire­ty or even par­tial­ly, with­out de­fray­ing any cost in­curred by any firm in sub­mit­ting their ten­der.”

“The ser­vices to be pro­vid­ed will be gov­erned by the terms and con­di­tions out­lined in the re­spec­tive so­lic­i­ta­tion doc­u­ment.” The dead­line for the sub­mis­sion of pro­pos­als is Oc­to­ber 1, 2024.

The spill, which was first spot­ted off the coast of To­ba­go’s At­lantic coast on Feb­ru­ary 7, dam­aged some of the is­land’s man­grove and threat­ened its tourism and fish­ing sec­tor.

The oil spill in To­ba­go's wa­ters was fea­tured in in­ter­na­tion­al news out­lets, with the BBC re­port­ing that "oil leak­ing from a cap­sized barge off the coast of To­ba­go has spread hun­dreds of miles to reach the Caribbean is­land of Bonaire.

Of­fi­cials on Bonaire, which is lo­cat­ed 50 miles (80km) north of the Venezue­lan coast, said the oil posed a "se­ri­ous threat to both hu­mans and na­ture".

The Gulf Stream was re­float­ed last month un­der the su­per­vi­sion of a team from an in­ter­na­tion­al­ly rec­og­nized sal­vage com­pa­ny, T&T Sal­vage Inc and lat­er towed to Trinidad.

En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries Min­is­ter, Stu­art Young, says T&T has made rep­re­sen­ta­tion to the Unit­ed King­dom-based In­ter­na­tion­al Oil Pol­lu­tion Com­pen­sa­tion Fund (IOPCF) for com­pen­sa­tion rang­ing from US$14 mil­lion to US$20 mil­lion.

In Au­gust, Prime Min­is­ter Dr. Kei­th Row­ley said his gov­ern­ment was con­tin­u­ing its search for the peo­ple re­spon­si­ble for the aban­don­ment of the Gulf Stream.

More than six months af­ter the Gulf Stream cap­sized, it still re­mains un­clear who owns the barge and what may have caused it to sink.