SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

shar­lene.ram­per­sad@guardian.co.tt

 A three-mem­ber team of ex­perts was yes­ter­day dis­patched from Trinidad and To­ba­go to Venezuela to ex­am­ine and in­ves­ti­gate the con­di­tion of the FSO Nabari­ma - a float­ing oil stor­age ves­sel said to be dan­ger­ous­ly close to tip­ping over and spilling its car­go in­to the Caribbean Sea.

The mis­sion was con­firmed by For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Dr Amery Browne and En­er­gy Min­is­ter Franklin Khan yes­ter­day. Khan said he was ex­pect­ing to re­ceive a re­port by to­day on the ves­sel’s con­di­tion.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia at a trade agree­ment sign­ing be­tween T&T and Chile at his St Clair of­fice, Browne said his min­istry had been try­ing for some time to get per­mis­sion to ex­am­ine the ves­sel. At the time, he said he had “just re­ceived word” that the re­quest was grant­ed and the team had al­ready land­ed in Venezuela.

The Nabari­ma has caused in­ter­na­tion­al con­cern for sev­er­al weeks af­ter pho­tos were re­leased by work­ers of wa­ter seep­ing in­to its en­gine room, caus­ing it to list.

How­ev­er, Venezue­lan oil com­pa­ny PDVSA re­leased state­ments in the weeks that fol­lowed claim­ing the ves­sel, which has a car­go of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 1.3 mil­lion bar­rels of crude oil, was right­ed and the wa­ter had been pumped out.

But in a fact-find­ing mis­sion last Fri­day, en­vi­ron­men­tal watch­dog group Fish­er­men and Friends of the Sea (FFOS) took their own pho­tos and videos of the ves­sel, which was seen tilt­ing dan­ger­ous­ly to one side. Fol­low­ing the re­lease of the FFOS pho­tos, the Min­istry of En­er­gy sent out a re­lease stat­ing re­quests had been sent to Venezue­lan au­thor­i­ties for T&T to be al­lowed to send a con­tin­gent to in­spect the ves­sel.

Yes­ter­day, Browne said the Gov­ern­ment was deeply con­cerned about the ves­sel’s con­di­tion and had made re­quests to as­sess it in­de­pen­dent­ly, de­spite as­sur­ances from the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment it was sta­ble.

“There were many de­lays on the Venezue­lan side to achiev­ing this but I am pleased to let you know I was in­formed a short while ago that our ex­pert in­spec­tion is cur­rent­ly in Venezuela, hav­ing re­ceived per­mis­sion and au­tho­ri­sa­tion for ingress in­to the coun­try and em­bark­ing on the ves­sel it­self. They are cur­rent­ly there, have com­menced their sci­en­tif­ic stud­ies and will be pre­sent­ing a re­port to the Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries in short or­der,” Browne said.

He said he was hope­ful that in the com­ing week he will have in­for­ma­tion for the peo­ple of T&T about the ves­sel’s con­di­tion.

Browne said the team was as­sem­bled by the En­er­gy Min­istry and his min­istry’s role was to en­sure doors were opened for the team in Venezuela.

Asked if knew whether an oil spill mod­el had been com­plet­ed by the En­er­gy Min­istry, Browne said, “This is a min­istry that takes it’s re­spon­si­bil­i­ty se­ri­ous­ly. T&T is not new to the field of petro­chem­i­cals, the Min­istry of En­er­gy has con­sid­er­able ex­pe­ri­ence and on an on­go­ing ba­sis has been do­ing mod­el­ling and prepa­ra­tion for spills with­in T&T and sce­nar­ios in our wa­ters.”

He said the re­port from the team will de­ter­mine what the next steps should be.

En­vi­ron­men­tal com­pa­ny Coastal Dy­nam­ics Lim­it­ed has pre­pared pre­lim­i­nary oil spill mod­els for the FSO Nabari­ma but was hes­i­tant to share the ac­tu­al mod­el yes­ter­day, as di­rec­tor Frank Teelucks­ingh said he did not want the pub­lic to be mis­led by the da­ta.

Oil spill mod­el­ling is used to pre­dict which ar­eas oil would con­t­a­m­i­nate in the event of a spill based on oceano­graph­ic and me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal pat­terns in the ar­eas like­ly to be af­fect­ed.

In the mod­el done by Coastal Dy­nam­ics, Teelucks­ingh said in the short term, oil spilled from the Nabari­ma showed a high like­li­hood of be­ing trans­port­ed to the north and north­west in­to Venezue­lan wa­ters.

“In the longer term, such a spill can have cat­a­stroph­ic ef­fects on the en­tire Gulf of Paria, in­clud­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go, as im­pacts will not be iso­lat­ed to any spe­cif­ic lo­ca­tion,” he said.

“This is based on the pre­vail­ing oceano­graph­ic and me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal pat­terns with­in the Gulf of Paria, which is af­fect­ed by the wa­ter depth, tides, winds, basin shape, salin­i­ty and tem­per­a­ture and the mean flow. This means that there is po­ten­tial for any spill to be­come en­trained in cur­rents that form the re­cir­cu­la­tion cells that bring wa­ter mass­es tran­sit­ing the mid-Gulf area to­wards our shore­line along the west coast of Trinidad.”

When the pos­si­bil­i­ty of the ves­sel sink­ing was fig­ured in­to the cal­cu­la­tions, Teelucks­ingh said there was a high po­ten­tial for the spill to move east­wards as it ap­proach­es the Drag­on’s Mouth (North­west penin­su­la, Trinidad) and be­come en­trained in the cir­cu­la­tion that can trans­port oil along the west coast of Trinidad, south­wards to La Brea and Ce­dros.

How­ev­er, he stressed that more in-depth mod­el­ling need­ed to be com­plet­ed to de­ter­mine all the ar­eas that might be af­fect­ed if the oil is spilled.

“We, em­pha­sise, how­ev­er, that any oil spill tra­jec­to­ry mod­el­ling should be used on­ly as an in­di­ca­tion of one po­ten­tial sce­nario of where the oil may go for a par­tic­u­lar set of oceano­graph­ic and me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal con­di­tions,” Teelucks­ingh said.