Just un­der two weeks af­ter it was con­firmed that T&T’s sub­mis­sion to the In­ter­na­tion­al Oil Pol­lu­tion Com­pen­sa­tion (IOPC) Fund was ac­cept­ed, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young met IOPC rep­re­sen­ta­tives yes­ter­day.

In a news re­lease on Mon­day, the Min­istry said Young met with of­fi­cials from the IOPC Fund to dis­cuss the next steps in the claims process for com­pen­sa­tion re­lat­ing to the To­ba­go oil spill.

At a press con­fer­ence con­firm­ing the IOPC’s agree­ment to com­pen­sate T&T for the clean up ef­forts, Young stat­ed the cost in­curred could cross US$30 mil­lion.

The re­lease con­firmed that rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the T&T Coast Guard, Min­istry of Works and Trans­port and the In­sti­tute of Ma­rine Af­fairs were al­so present at the meet­ing at the Min­istry of En­er­gy’s In­ter­na­tion­al Wa­ter­front Com­plex, head of­fice, Port-of-Spain.

Dur­ing the meet­ing, Min­is­ter Young re­it­er­at­ed the in­ten­tion of the Gov­ern­ment to take le­gal ac­tion against the own­er of the barge, Gulf­stream and the own­er of the tug, So­lo Creed and as­sured the IOPC that T&T will con­tin­ue to ag­gres­sive­ly pur­sue leads util­is­ing all avail­able re­sources.

The IOPC rep­re­sen­ta­tives in­di­cat­ed that the next steps in­clude treat­ing with the claims that en­com­pass eco­nom­ic loss due to the oil spill. Last month, Young led a high-lev­el del­e­ga­tion to Lon­don with the goal of cham­pi­oning T&T’s case for com­pen­sa­tion for its oil spill re­sponse ac­tiv­i­ties, said the min­istry.

The re­lease ex­plained, “This trans­par­ent and thor­ough process will be led by the IOPC with the aim that all claims are val­i­dat­ed and con­sid­ered for com­pen­sa­tion. All par­ties pledged full co­op­er­a­tion and con­tin­u­ous com­mu­ni­ca­tion to en­sure a seam­less claims process.”