Gail Alexan­der

Gov­ern­ment has now ini­ti­at­ed of­fi­cial com­mu­ni­ca­tion to get in­de­pen­dent ver­i­fi­ca­tion from Venezue­lan au­thor­i­ties of the sta­tus of the dam­aged oil tanker “Nabari­ma”—af­ter re­ports that the ves­sel has tilt­ed and sunk 14.5 me­tres.

Equip­ment sup­pli­ers in T&T have been ap­proached to as­sist in ad­dress­ing the is­sue con­cern­ing the “Nabari­ma”.

T&T En­er­gy Min­is­ter Franklin Khan yes­ter­day con­firmed Gov­ern­ment is seek­ing the in­de­pen­dent ver­i­fi­ca­tion. He not­ed that ini­tial re­ports from Venezue­lan au­thor­i­ties were that the ves­sel was up­right and in sta­ble con­di­tion.

Khan al­so added, “The En­er­gy Min­istry through the Venezue­lan Em­bassy has of­fered any as­sis­tance, tech­ni­cal or lo­gis­ti­cal to the Gov­ern­ment of Venezuela that it may re­quire. Al­so, the Min­is­ter of En­er­gy is in con­tact with his Venezue­lan coun­ter­part for fur­ther up­dates as they be­come avail­able.”

An Ar­gus me­dia re­port on Wednes­day stat­ed that the “Nabari­ma”, a float­ing oil stor­age and of­fload­ing ves­sel (FSO) is moored in the Paria Gulf, “Close to T&T where equip­ment sup­pli­ers have been ap­proached to as­sist in ad­dress­ing the is­sue.”

In­ter­na­tion­al mar­itime re­ports —with pho­tos—are that the “Nabari­ma” has been lean­ing to the right side in re­cent weeks af­ter it sus­tained wa­ter in­fil­tra­tion.

The fact that its car­go is 1.43 mil­lion bar­rels of oil has sparked fears that it’s sink­ing and the oil car­go will con­t­a­m­i­nate the Gulf, dam­ag­ing T&T’s ma­rine life.

The ves­sel is op­er­at­ed by Venezue­lan state oil com­pa­ny PDVSA.

The Ar­gus re­port stat­ed that PDVSA said the stored crude oil would be trans­ferred to an­oth­er ves­sel in or­der to sta­bilise the ves­sel—but didn’t dis­close con­crete plans.

Ar­gus’ re­port stat­ed that the Ital­ian Eni firm—a mi­nor­i­ty part­ner of PDVSA—as­sured the ves­sel has been sta­bilised, a re­cent wa­ter leak was “solved” and a trans­fer of the oil car­go is planned. ENI said PDVSA said there is cur­rent­ly no risk of oil spill” and that com­pa­ny was col­lab­o­rat­ing with its Pet­ro­Su­cre as­so­ciate to de­fine and im­ple­ment a pro­gram for un­load­ing the oil car­go.

ENI spoke about the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the pro­gram us­ing a dy­nam­ic po­si­tion­ing tanker and tech­ni­cal ser­vices.

Apart from Ar­gus’ re­port, Khan was con­tact­ed by Guardian Me­dia on con­cerns by the Fish­er­men and Friends of the Sea group which has ap­pealed for Gov­ern­ment to as­sist Venezuela on the mat­ter and ex­pressed con­cern that Khan hadn’t ful­ly clar­i­fied the is­sue.

FFOS added, “If the ves­sel is ‘up­right and sta­ble,’ as was said why then is the Venezue­lan Gov­ern­ment hasti­ly at­tempt­ing to re­move the bar­rels of oil?”

The FSO Nabarima oil tanker off the coast of Trinidad and Tobago.

In a state­ment to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day af­ter­noon Khan said the Min­istry con­tin­ues “to close­ly mon­i­tor the de­vel­op­ing sit­u­a­tion” re­gard­ing ves­sel.

He re­it­er­at­ed that it stores crude oil from the Joint Ven­ture of PDVSA (74 per cent) and ENI ( 26 per cent).

“This trans­ship­ment has stopped since the US sanc­tions. The FSO is now filled to ca­pac­i­ty (1.3 mil­lion bar­rels of oil). Ini­tial re­ports from Venezue­lan au­thor­i­ties in­di­cat­ed the ves­sel was up­right and in a sta­ble con­di­tion. There was no risk of an oil spill. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, it is a dou­ble hull ves­sel. How­ev­er, re­cent re­ports from the na­tion­al press have in­di­cat­ed the ves­sel has tilt­ed 5 de­grees to the right and that it has sunk 14.5 me­tres at the wa­ter line. We are cur­rent­ly at­tempt­ing to get in­de­pen­dent ver­i­fi­ca­tion of this from the Venezue­lan au­thor­i­ties.”

Khan al­so not­ed Au­gus’ re­port quot­ing ENI. He said that re­port in­di­cat­ed the ves­sel is sta­ble and the re­cent wa­ter leak has been solved. The re­port fur­ther stat­ed plans are afoot to trans­fer the crude oil to an­oth­er ves­sel to fur­ther sta­bilise the ves­sel and there’s no risk of an oil spill.

Khan added, “The na­tion needs to be re­mind­ed that Venezuela is a sov­er­eign state and T&T can­not uni­lat­er­al­ly en­ter Venezue­lan ter­ri­to­ry to con­duct any re­con­nais­sance or oth­er works with­out be­ing in­vit­ed to so do. There ex­ists a bi­lat­er­al agree­ment be­tween Venezuela and Trinidad for an oil spill con­tin­gency plan in the event a gen­uine risk ex­ists or an ac­tive spill oc­curs. This is the agree­ment that will gov­ern the ac­tion of the Gov­ern­ment.”

Yes­ter­day UNC MP Ani­ta Haynes (shad­ow En­er­gy Min­is­ter) said, “If the Nabari­ma sinks it will trig­ger an eco­log­i­cal dis­as­ter of which T&T has nev­er seen. Our ma­rine coast­line from Ch­aguara­mas to Ica­cos could be de­stroyed and along with it the liveli­hoods of thou­sands. This dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tion de­mands im­me­di­ate at­ten­tion but the si­lence of the Row­ley regime is deaf­en­ing.”

“So far, no mem­ber of the Row­ley regime has pub­licly ad­dressed this grave threat to our na­tion, nor has any emer­gency or con­tin­gency plans been put in place in the event of a ma­jor oil spill. Gov­ern­ment has a du­ty un­der the bi­lat­er­al treaty on oil spills to get ac­cu­rate in­for­ma­tion on this sit­u­a­tion. Sec­ond­ly, it should have start­ed to con­sid­er how it would plan for the worst case which is a spill head­ed to­wards our west coast.”