Asha Javeed

Lead Ed­i­tor In­ves­ti­ga­tions

asha.javeed@guardian.co.tt

In col­lab­o­ra­tion with Belling­cat: Lo­gan Williams, Thomas Bor­deaux, Lotte van de Waal and mem­bers of the Belling­cat Dis­cord com­mu­ni­ty.

Just over 100 days since the So­lo Creed, the tug­boat be­hind the oil spill off the Cove coast in To­ba­go aban­doned the barge it was tow­ing, the Gulf­stream—af­ter it got stuck in a reef spilling hun­dreds of bar­rels of bunker fu­el along the coast—it was seized in Lu­an­da, An­go­la. 

Since Feb­ru­ary 5, the ship’s Au­to­mat­ic Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion Sys­tem (AIS) lo­ca­tion broad­cast has been switched off, and two days lat­er, on Feb­ru­ary 7, fu­el be­gan leak­ing from the over­turned, clear­ly aban­doned barge. 

How­ev­er, on May 11, the An­golan Navy re­port­ed that the So­lo Creed was seized off the coast of the African na­tion’s cap­i­tal city, Lu­an­da, for unau­tho­rised breach of its claimed off­shore oil se­cu­ri­ty perime­ter of oil ex­trac­tion blocks 17 and 18. 

These ex­clu­sive zones are op­er­at­ed by sub­sidiaries of BP and To­tal En­er­gies, ac­cord­ing to an­nounce­ments on the com­pa­nies’ web­sites.

While lit­tle in­for­ma­tion was re­leased fol­low­ing the de­tain­ment, ac­cord­ing to a re­port by the An­go­la Press News Agency, An­golan Navy com­man­der Di­val­do Fon­se­ca said that “the ves­sel’s oc­cu­pants claimed that they in­tend­ed to re­sup­ply with wa­ter and sup­plies but with­out the ap­pro­pri­ate au­tho­ri­sa­tion. Di­val­do Fon­se­ca re­it­er­at­ed the com­mit­ment of the An­golan Navy to con­tin­ue de­vel­op­ing ac­tions to guar­an­tee the in­vi­o­la­bil­i­ty of na­tion­al wa­ters.” 

Belling­cat was able to ver­i­fy the cur­rent lo­ca­tion of the So­lo Creed us­ing satel­lite im­agery fol­low­ing video footage post­ed by a news re­port from RTP Africa af­ter it was de­tained.

The So­lo Creed was ge­olo­cat­ed in this video to Lu­an­da, where the ship ap­pears to be at an­chor in Lu­an­da Bay. (See im­ages).

De­spite the de­tain­ment of the So­lo Creed be­ing re­port­ed in lo­cal me­dia in An­go­la, the news re­ports did not men­tion the ship’s role in the oil spill in To­ba­go.

Last Thurs­day, in a press state­ment, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young said the Gov­ern­ment had re­ceived in­for­ma­tion that the So­lo Creed was de­tained in An­go­la. 

Young said he re­quest­ed that of­fi­cial cor­re­spon­dence be sent via the Min­istry of For­eign and CARI­COM Af­fairs and the Mar­itime Ser­vices Di­vi­sion of the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port to An­golan au­thor­i­ties to ver­i­fy cer­tain in­for­ma­tion that has come to hand.

“The Trinidad and To­ba­go Coast Guard is al­so as­sist­ing in the ex­er­cise to ver­i­fy the lo­ca­tion of the ‘So­lo Creed’. The Gov­ern­ment is com­mit­ted to con­tin­u­ing its pur­suit of those re­spon­si­ble for the oil spill in To­ba­go and will con­tin­ue to keep the pub­lic in­formed of ma­te­r­i­al de­vel­op­ments,” the state­ment said.

No in­sur­ance on boats

The Gov­ern­ment main­tains that no in­sur­er has yet been iden­ti­fied for the So­lo Creed and Gulf­stream, and no own­er has come for­ward to claim re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the dam­age.

In an ex­clu­sive in­ves­ti­ga­tion by Guardian Me­dia and Belling­cat, the reg­is­tered own­er of the So­lo Creed was iden­ti­fied as Melis­sa Rona Gon­za­lez, an of­fi­cer of Melaj Off­shore Cor­po­ra­tion whose prin­ci­pal own­er is Au­gus­tine Jack­son. Jack­son has a his­to­ry of in­volve­ment in oil deals in Venezuela and Guyana. But when con­tact­ed, Jack­son claimed that the So­lo Creed and the barge Gulf­stream had been sold to Abra­ham Olalekan of Nige­ria.

Olalekan has since laid claim to both ves­sels, and in March, he said the So­lo Creed was bound for Africa.

In an in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Olalekan said, “I’m the own­er and com­mu­ni­cat­ed with the T&T Gov­ern­ment dur­ing the ac­ci­dent, so how come they are look­ing for the own­er? And do you even un­der­stand this sce­nario was an ac­ci­dent no­body en­vis­aged?”

When pushed fur­ther on why he stopped com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the Gov­ern­ment, he said, “Of course, there are cor­re­spon­dence be­tween my lawyer and Trinidad Gov­ern­ment ad­dress­ing the in­ci­dent, but un­for­tu­nate­ly the barge has no in­sur­ance to help.”

IOPC claims

The oil spill, which start­ed in To­ba­go and reached as far as Bonaire, has an es­ti­mat­ed cleanup cost of US$23.5 mil­lion.

At a May 5 press con­fer­ence, Young said Gov­ern­ment was seek­ing fund­ing from the UK-based In­ter­na­tion­al Oil Pol­lu­tion Com­pen­sa­tion Funds (IOPC) to cov­er some of the costs it and the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) in­curred as a re­sult of the oil spill.

Ac­cord­ing to the IOPC doc­u­ment, “Ini­tial es­ti­mates of the cost of the re­sponse to the oil spill, in­clu­sive of oil re­moval from the wreck so far, is in the re­gion of USD23.5 mil­lion (TTD 160 mil­lion). So far it is es­ti­mat­ed that USD 12.5 mil­lion (TTD 85 mil­lion) has been spent as of 6 April, 2024. Fur­ther costs and claims for eco­nom­ic loss­es are ex­pect­ed. Bulk clean-up op­er­a­tions were com­plet­ed in March 2024, and the shore­line clean-up is ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed in April 2024. The oil re­moval from the wreck is al­so ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed by mid-May 2024.”

Last Thurs­day, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said, “We start­ed out mak­ing a claim in the es­ti­mates of ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$30 mil­lion. That has since been re­duced to US$23 mil­lion and when all is said and done we will know what the fig­ure is.”

But on Fri­day, Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine said To­ba­go was an­tic­i­pat­ing the mo­ment when the own­er of the ves­sel is pos­i­tive­ly iden­ti­fied and that the Gov­ern­ment may, in fact, need to re­vert to the US$30 mil­lion claim.

“The Prime Min­is­ter is say­ing US$23 mil­lion, and the Min­is­ter of En­er­gy did say some­what up­wards of US$30 mil­lion. Twen­ty-three mil­lion brings us at around TT$150.4 mil­lion. Thir­ty mil­lion might be more ide­al, but at this point, with­out con­fir­ma­tion on what we would get past com­pen­sa­tion, it’s dif­fi­cult to es­ti­mate how we would be able to move with meet­ing the fi­nan­cial re­quire­ments,” he said.

The Chief Sec­re­tary added that the THA had made a re­quest for mon­ey from the Mid-year Bud­get Re­view to treat with oil spill clean-up, af­fect­ed fish­er­folk, and oth­ers in need of re­lief.