Guyana Vice Pres­i­dent Dr Bhar­rat Jagdeo says his coun­try should not be held ac­count­able for To­ba­go’s oil spill dis­as­ter, which was caused by a ves­sel that was en­route to Guyana.

The ves­sel ran aground just off the coast of Cove and was dis­cov­ered on Feb­ru­ary 7 just af­ter 7.20 am.

Dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence in Guyana, where it was not­ed the coun­try was named as be­ing the ves­sel’s in­tend­ed des­ti­na­tion, and if it would take some sort of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, Jagdeo an­swered in the neg­a­tive.

“I don’t know about that. First­ly, I didn’t know any­thing about it. They were try­ing to find out from us whether the ves­sels came to Guyana. But even if it’s des­tined to Guyana, any ves­sel des­tined for Guyana could cou­ple over, sink and cre­ate prob­lems. So would we stop ves­sels com­ing to Guyana?”

He asked, “Were they bring­ing this oil to Guyana?”

The ves­sel, which was spot­ted spew­ing oil, was iden­ti­fied by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Coast Guard (TTCG) on Wednes­day. In a re­lease, the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty said the TTCG con­firmed the in­volve­ment of two ves­sels: a tug­boat iden­ti­fied as So­lo Creed and a barge named Gulf­stream, which had over­turned. The min­istry said it is work­ing on iden­ti­fy­ing the ves­sels and their own­ers.

In­ves­ti­ga­tions showed the ves­sels were head­ing for Guyana and had passed through Pana­ma but did not ar­rive as planned.

Yes­ter­day, Bhar­rat al­so said he sees no le­gal ram­i­fi­ca­tions in any way for his coun­try com­ing out of the in­ci­dent. He said the log­ic—wher­ev­er it’s be­ing formed— made no sense.

How­ev­er, he said once Guyana has the ca­pac­i­ty to as­sist, it will with­out hes­i­ta­tion.

“It has be­come an in­ter­na­tion­al event, so a num­ber of in­ter­na­tion­al bod­ies are be­ing ap­proached. If we have any ca­pac­i­ty to deal with this mat­ter…If we have any ca­pac­i­ty, we are will­ing to share with our neigh­bours,” he said.