Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Ap­prox­i­mate­ly 50,000 bar­rels of liq­uid waste have been ex­tract­ed from To­ba­go’s coast­line be­tween Scar­bor­ough and Cove in clean-up op­er­a­tions af­ter the Feb­ru­ary 7 oil spill from the cap­sized barge there—and clean-up con­tin­ues.

This was con­firmed by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley in Par­lia­ment on Fri­day.

Row­ley was re­spond­ing to UNC MP Rudy In­dars­ingh’s query on the fi­nan­cial cost in­curred by the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment, the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly and state en­ter­pris­es for man­age­ment and clean-up of the oil spill that was caused by a 200-me­tre cap­sized barge off the Cove area.

Row­ley said it was ob­served that what ap­peared to be liq­uid hy­dro­car­bon-based prod­uct was es­cap­ing from the ves­sel. Soon af­ter that no­ti­fi­ca­tion, Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed was tasked with the ma­jor re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of re­spond­ing to the spill. He said that in­volved ob­tain­ing spe­cialised oil spill equip­ment, ma­chin­ery and ap­prox­i­mate­ly 200 per­son­nel, some from To­ba­go and many from else­where in the na­tion, Her­itage and oth­er en­ti­ties.

Row­ley said, “The bot­tom line is while the spill is now abat­ed and ap­par­ent­ly end­ed, the clean-up op­er­a­tion still con­tin­ues, there’s still some clean­ing to be done and most im­por­tant­ly, the ex­trac­tion from the ves­sel of about—it ap­pears as though—a few tens of thou­sands of bar­rels of dan­ger­ous liq­uid which for­tu­nate­ly so far has re­mained with­in the hull of the ves­sel.”

He added, “In terms of the clean-up, ap­prox­i­mate­ly 50,000 bar­rels of liq­uid waste have been ex­tract­ed from the coast­line be­tween Scar­bor­ough and Cove and the op­er­a­tion con­tin­ues.”

Row­ley said Gov­ern­ment was not in a po­si­tion at this time to in­di­cate what the cost of the whole op­er­a­tion was as it was still con­tin­u­ing.

“Rough seas in re­cent weeks would have de­layed the ex­trac­tion of the liq­uid that’s with­in the hull and we still have staff, some lo­cal, some for­eign, on stand­by, at the first op­por­tu­ni­ty to be­gin to do that ex­trac­tion,” he said.

“So the op­er­a­tion is still on­go­ing and when it is com­plet­ed and all costs are put for­ward and dealt with and ac­cept­ed to be paid, we’ll be in a po­si­tion to give an ac­cu­rate an­swer to this ques­tion.”

Pre­cur­sor Drag­on Field ac­tiv­i­ties on­go­ing

Row­ley al­so replied to UNC MP David Lee’s query on what in­fra­struc­tur­al de­vel­op­ment had been done to date to ex­plore and pro­duce nat­ur­al gas from the Drag­on Field.

He said apart from the 30-year li­cense for ex­plo­ration/pro­duc­tion of nat­ur­al gas from Venezuela to T&T, the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny and Shell had been work­ing on the el­e­ments nec­es­sary to get the project done. He said these op­er­a­tions usu­al­ly had long lead times and ges­ta­tion pe­ri­ods.

For ex­am­ple, he said, the pro­cure­ment of sur­vey ves­sels to sur­vey the field, the plan­ning of well work, en­gi­neer­ing de­signs, cost­ings and oth­er nec­es­sary work for the project had been go­ing on and all the nec­es­sary ac­tiv­i­ties were un­der­way as pre­cur­sors to any phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty that might take place on the field.