The probe in­to the con­tin­ued spillage of diesel in­to To­ba­go’s wa­ters from the sunken Gulf­stream barge took a new twist yes­ter­day, af­ter Guyana me­dia out­let News Source re­port­ed that the coun­try’s Vice Pres­i­dent, Bhar­rat Jagdeo, had called for a full probe of the in­ci­dent.

This af­ter mul­ti­ple sources close to the Guyana gov­ern­ment and the state-owned Guyana Pow­er and Light Com­pa­ny re­vealed to News Source jour­nal­ist Gor­don Mose­ley that the ves­sel was des­tined for Guyana with fu­el for the Guyana Pow­er and Light Com­pa­ny.

But GPL last night de­nied it had any link to the ves­sel.

A source close to pow­er com­pa­ny had ear­li­er con­firmed to News Source that there may have been an arrange­ment for the fu­el to be sup­plied to the com­pa­ny, but the arrange­ment may have been shelved.

The barge, which cap­sized and over­turned in­to the sea off the coast of To­ba­go on Feb­ru­ary 7, has spilled thou­sands of gal­lons of diesel in­to the sea, caus­ing a ma­jor headache and clean-up ex­er­cise for the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly and Gov­ern­ment au­thor­i­ties.

Both Guyana and T&T are in­ves­ti­gat­ing the in­ci­dent, since the crew of the So­lo Creed, which was tow­ing the barge, are still to be lo­cat­ed.

Jagdeo yes­ter­day told News Source that there is need for a full probe with re­gard to the in­ci­dent and the pos­si­ble links to the GPL.

“We should have a full-fledged in­ves­ti­ga­tion, and we want to es­tab­lish what the facts are. And if the fu­el was to come to GPL, we should know about that. But from what they have said, so far they have said to us that they had no agree­ment with any com­pa­ny that has been iden­ti­fied glob­al­ly, these are the com­pa­nies that own the tug and the name of the ves­sel that has over­turned in Trinidad and To­ba­go, they have no com­mer­cial en­gage­ment with them,” Jagdeo said.

News Source re­port­ed that while there may have been no en­gage­ment or agree­ment with the com­pa­nies that own the over­turned ves­sel or the tug that was ac­com­pa­ny­ing it, there was re­port­ed­ly a deal with Guyanese in­di­vid­u­als to sup­ply the fu­el to the pow­er com­pa­ny. Those in­di­vid­u­als, it said, are be­lieved to have con­tract­ed the ves­sel and the barge to ship the fu­el to Guyana for sale to GPL.

Jagdeo told the me­dia house that the state-owned pow­er com­pa­ny should make its records and con­tracts avail­able.

“GPL should make avail­able to you, all of the in­for­ma­tion, these were pub­licly ten­dered, and they should make that avail­able and who won the con­tracts,” he said.

There was al­so con­cern about the source of the fu­el that was spilled. Ma­rine track­er web­sites show the ves­sel was picked up in satel­lite im­ages in Pozue­lo Bay, Venezuela, dur­ing the en­tire fi­nal week of Jan­u­ary.

It is sus­pect­ed that more than 35,000 bar­rels of fu­el might have been pur­chased from Venezuela, which would be against cur­rent US sanc­tions on that coun­try.

But Jagdeo said he was un­aware of the orig­i­nal source of the fu­el.

“I am not sure about where the fu­el was bought, but the thing is, is that GPL can eas­i­ly give you the dates when we ten­dered, the bids they re­ceived, who won the bids and the con­trac­tu­al arrange­ments we had with them, full trans­paren­cy on this mat­ter,” Jagdeo said.

When ques­tioned on the is­sue, Guyana’s Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Works Juan Edghill, who holds min­is­te­r­i­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for GPL, said con­ver­sa­tions on the mat­ter were on­go­ing.

“As far as I am aware, all of those con­ver­sa­tions have been on­go­ing be­tween the rel­e­vant stake­hold­ers and that is what I will say at this time,” Edghill said.

Mean­while, Mar­itime sources, who have been prob­ing the satel­lite im­ages record­ed by tanker track­er web­sites, re­vealed that the last im­ages of the ves­sel be­ing towed were cap­tured just two days be­fore the cat­a­stroph­ic fu­el spill. It is al­so be­lieved that based on the satel­lite im­ages cap­tured, the ves­sels were be­ing tracked through­out their jour­ney and just be­fore the spill.

News Source re­port­ed that T&T and Guyana au­thor­i­ties have been work­ing close­ly on the probe in­to the oil spill, as they at­tempt to as­cer­tain own­er­ship of the over­turned ves­sel and the where­abouts of the crew.

Mose­ley al­so re­port­ed that promi­nent George­town busi­ness­man Mo­hamed Qua­lan­der, of the Queensway Com­pa­ny, had dis­tanced him­self from own­er­ship of the ves­sels as­so­ci­at­ed with the spill and any link­ages to trad­ing in fu­el.

In a state­ment, Qua­lan­der said he has nev­er owned any fu­el boat and has nev­er been in­volved in the trad­ing of fu­el in Guyana or any­where else in the world. He made it clear he has no knowl­edge of the ves­sels in­volved in the in­ci­dent.

The state­ment was is­sued by the busi­ness­man af­ter an anony­mous Face­book page al­leged he had links to the ves­sel that caused the spill. He said he had since filed a po­lice com­plaint over the so­cial me­dia post. (News Source)