In Oc­to­ber 2023, po­lice of­fi­cers were praised by CoP Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher for seiz­ing 60 bar­rels of fu­el in Los Iros. The CoP stat­ed that this was most like­ly to be trad­ed for nar­cotics with a South Amer­i­can drug traf­fick­ing net­work.

As far back as Sep­tem­ber 2011, Lt Colonel Kirk Jean-Bap­tiste, the then PRO of the T&T Coast Guard, ex­plained, “This prob­lem has been hap­pen­ing for some time now, where lo­cals buy fu­el, par­tic­u­lar­ly diesel, at sub­sidised prices and then sell it to boats that take it to Guyana and up and down the is­lands.”

The Stabroek News of No­vem­ber 19, 2020, re­port­ed that ‘Fu­el smug­gling re­mains a threat to le­git­i­mate deal­ers’. Guyana En­er­gy Agency head Ma­hen­der Shar­ma said, “It is im­por­tant to note that diesel con­tin­ues to be sourced from Venezuela. As re­cent as last week, the cap­tains of two sep­a­rate fu­el ves­sels re­port­ed sourc­ing their diesel from Venezuela.” He em­pha­sised that the in­tent of smug­glers is to avoid pay­ment of lo­cal tax­es.

T&T was even ac­cused of as­sist­ing Venezuela in 2019, de­spite the US em­bar­go, when Kpler, a Paris-based com­pa­ny, re­port­ed that ships ap­peared to be col­lect­ing oil car­go at Venezuela be­fore stop­ping off at Trinidad and To­ba­go and then set­ting off again, in a like­ly at­tempt to get new bills of lad­ing to dis­guise car­go ori­gins.

The il­lic­it trade in pe­tro­le­um is a mul­ti-bil­lion dol­lar in­dus­try present across the world. Glob­al Fi­nan­cial In­tegri­ty es­ti­mates that theft of state- or pri­vate­ly-owned crude oil is worth at least US$5.2 bil­lion to US$11.9 bil­lion an­nu­al­ly.

Diesel has now been iden­ti­fied as the fu­el leak­ing from the Gulf­stream barge which over­turned in To­ba­go’s wa­ters, pol­lut­ing 15 kilo­me­tres of To­ba­go’s shore­line.

Belling­cat re­port­ed that three days be­fore, the barge de­vel­oped a leak, leav­ing be­hind a slick that stretched for at least 40 kilo­me­tres. Satel­lite im­agery pur­port­ed­ly pin­point­ed that Gulf­stream sailed from Pozue­lo Bay, Venezuela.

The crew of Gulf­stream’s elu­sive tug, the So­lo Creed, needs to be lo­cat­ed and an­swer if this in­ten­tion­al sail­ing in­to our ter­ri­to­ry was to avert this dis­as­ter away from the Venezuela’s coast­line.

On Au­gust 30, 2019, a mys­te­ri­ous oil spill oc­curred on Brazil’s north­east coast­line. It was the worst oil spill in Brazil­ian his­to­ry and the largest en­vi­ron­men­tal dis­as­ter ever record­ed on any trop­i­cal coastal re­gion world­wide. A Greek-flagged ship, the NM Boubouli­na, be­long­ing to Delta Tankers Ltd, was sus­pect­ed and in­ves­ti­ga­tions found the oil to be of Venezue­lan ori­gin.

We have to re­duce our de­pen­den­cy on fos­sil fu­el, which con­tin­ued to harm our health and plan­et.

World lead­ers preach about the dan­gers of fos­sil fu­els but the Ukraine-Russ­ian war il­lus­trat­ed some na­tions’ de­pen­dence on fos­sil-based en­er­gy.

We have had nu­mer­ous glob­al talks on wind pow­er, hy­dropow­er and so­lar pow­er. Elec­tric cars were tout­ed to be the new sav­iour.

Two years ago, US Pres­i­dent Joe Biden planned to make half of all new cars sold in the US by 2023 elec­tric.

In the Jan­u­ary 3, 2024, is­sue of the Busi­ness In­sid­er, Paris Mark wrote on the slow­down in EV sales. Ford and Gen­er­al Mo­tors de­layed their in­vest­ment in EV man­u­fac­tur­ing and even Tes­la de­layed a planned fac­to­ry in Mex­i­co.

EVBox’s blog on Feb­ru­ary 10, 2023, notes that the man­u­fac­tur­ing of a typ­i­cal EV bat­tery can re­sult in detri­men­tal pol­lut­ing ef­fects and high en­er­gy re­quire­ments for the pro­cure­ment of raw ma­te­ri­als and the man­u­fac­tur­ing process it­self.

This is why I was so ex­cit­ed to learn of Japan’s wa­ter en­gine in a car that now runs with hy­dro­gen fu­el, which gives safer pro­duc­tion and stor­age so­lu­tions.

Toy­ota’s wa­ter-dri­ven tech­nol­o­gy, ex­tract­ing hy­dro­gen from wa­ter through elec­trol­y­sis, is a ground­break­ing ad­vance­ment in a sus­tain­able clean and re­new­able fu­el source.

Three days ago, Japan was over­tak­en by Ger­many in glob­al eco­nom­ic rank­ings. Japan’s slip to fourth place was pre­dict­ed by the IMF tak­ing in­to ac­count their age­ing pop­u­la­tions, lim­it­ed nat­ur­al re­sources and ris­ing com­pe­ti­tion for their ex­ports.

Japan did re­mark­ably well post WW2 to achieve its eco­nom­ic suc­cess. It was once sec­ond to the USA in eco­nom­ic rank­ings.

In­dia is pre­dict­ed to as­cend to third place soon and some pre­dict that Japan may soon be over­tak­en by Ko­rea in the re­al (price-ad­just­ed) vol­ume of ex­ports.

This wa­ter en­gine can once more give Japan the thrust it needs.

To­day, Japan cel­e­brates the Em­per­or’s Birth­day (Ten­nō tan­jōbi). Japan has the old­est monar­chy in the world, over 1,500 years. His Majesty the Em­per­or Naruhi­to, as­sumed of­fice on April 30, 2019, af­ter the ab­di­ca­tion of his fa­ther.

It is pass­ing strange that his Majesty, who is an hon­orary mem­ber of the World Wa­ter Com­mis­sion for the 21st Cen­tu­ry and a spon­sor of the Glob­al Wa­ter Part­ner­ship, pre­sides over a coun­try that could now rev­o­lu­tionise the world with an en­gine fu­elled by wa­ter.