Tech­ni­cal meet­ings have tak­en place be­tween Venezuela and Trinidad and To­ba­go to as­sess the im­pact of the oil spill in To­ba­go and the nec­es­sary mit­i­ga­tion mea­sures.

Venezue­lan For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Yvan Gil spoke of the meet­ings via X (for­mer­ly Twit­ter) yes­ter­day.

Gil stat­ed that as in­struct­ed by Venezuela Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro, he has been fol­low­ing up on the oil spill and Venezuela re­mains avail­able to co-op­er­ate with T&T on the mat­ter.

Venezuela’s po­si­tion is the lat­est de­vel­op­ment fol­low­ing the oil spill which oc­curred in To­ba­go last Wednes­day, when a 90-me­tre cap­sized ves­sel, leak­ing oil, was sight­ed off a reef in The Cove area. It dam­aged coast­lines from Scar­bor­ough to Low­lands. Con­tain­ment and clean-up has been on­go­ing, led by To­ba­go Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency (TEMA) sup­port­ed by Trinidad au­thor­i­ties and oth­er agen­cies.

Op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress of­fi­cials said yes­ter­day that ques­tions on the oil spill will be posed to Gov­ern­ment in Par­lia­ment to­day. (See box)

The Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry on Wednes­day said in­ves­ti­ga­tions so far re­veal that at least two ves­sels - a tug reg­is­tered as So­lo Creed and a barge named Gulf­stream - were in­volved. Both ves­sels, traced from Pana­ma, were said to be bound for Guyana but nei­ther ar­rived there.

On Wednes­day al­so, To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine said the oil had moved in­to the Caribbean Sea near­ing Grena­da and he was ready to alert Caribbean neigh­bours who may be af­fect­ed. Yes­ter­day, Venezue­lan of­fi­cials said they as­sumed their coun­try may be af­fect­ed.

Af­ter Venezue­lan For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Gil’s post, Venezue­lan sources said the tech­ni­cal dis­cus­sions be­tween T&T and Venezuela had tak­en place over the last two days on­line. They said Venezuela is com­mit­ted to as­sist­ing T&T in the two main ar­eas: con­tain­ment and sta­bil­i­sa­tion of the oil and in iden­ti­fy­ing the barge that caused the oil spill.

Of­fi­cials said the oil spill would have like­ly arisen in talks held in Venezuela yes­ter­day be­tween Venezue­lan Vice Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­driguez and T&T En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young.

Yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, Ro­driguez post­ed on X that she was hav­ing a work­ing meet­ing with Young.

Of­fi­cials said that was for the Drag­on Field project but they ex­pect­ed the To­ba­go oil spill would al­so arise.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said re­cent­ly that Young was to re­turn to Cara­cas for talks on the Drag­on Field project.

Mean­while, T&T Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials con­firmed that an of­fi­cial re­quest was made to Guyana to as­sist with in­ves­ti­ga­tions, where the re­port­ed des­ti­na­tion in Guyana of the tug and barge and own­er­ship of the ves­sels were con­cerned. The T&T Coast Guard has al­ready been work­ing with the Guyana Coast Guard on the mat­ter.

A T&T of­fi­cial said word was be­ing await­ed on T&T’s re­quest. Guyanese gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed yes­ter­day said they were ob­tain­ing a sta­tus re­port on the mat­ter.

Young didn’t re­ply to texted queries on THA Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine’s claims that Gov­ern­ment may have “with­held crit­i­cal” in­for­ma­tion about the barge. Au­gus­tine al­so claimed a What’sApp mes­sage he re­ceived in­di­cat­ed the barge was car­ry­ing 5,000 tonnes of fu­el and that its own­er was “one of those try­ing to buy” the Petrotrin re­fin­ery in Trinidad.

Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Min­is­ter Symon de No­bri­ga, who said he’d read the com­ments in the news­pa­per, added, “I’m not pre­pared, and I don’t think any Gov­ern­ment would be pre­pared to com­ment on a What’s App mes­sage from an un­known source. I don’t know where it came from.

“Al­so, the Gov­ern­ment, through the Prime Min­is­ter, has stat­ed that it is and will be work­ing with the THA to re­solve the prob­lem as quick­ly as pos­si­ble, and as in­for­ma­tion be­comes avail­able and is ver­i­fied and proven fac­tu­al, it can be shared with the pop­u­la­tion, THA and Chief Sec­re­tary. Gov­ern­ment is do­ing that, as seen from the re­cent re­leas­es from the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry.”

De No­bri­ga said all arms of the state who can be of as­sis­tance in the sit­u­a­tion have been do­ing so - En­er­gy, Works, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and oth­er agen­cies, all be­ing led by the Prime Min­is­ter in sup­port­ing To­ba­go. He not­ed that while the PM chaired last Sun­day’s me­dia brief­ing on the is­sue, the Chief Sec­re­tary al­so spoke.

“We as a Gov­ern­ment con­tin­ue to do all we have to do and can do to en­sure the sit­u­a­tion in To­ba­go is re­solved in the in­ter­est of T&T.”

The Op­po­si­tion UNC is fil­ing queries on the oil spill is­sue for Gov­ern­ment to re­ply to in Par­lia­ment to­day, a UNC spokesman said.

Yes­ter­day, UNC MP Ravi Rati­ram al­so ques­tioned the oil spill’s en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pact, clean-up meth­ods and Gov­ern­ment’s re­sponse. He said the spill cre­at­ed po­ten­tial long-term en­vi­ron­men­tal ef­fects for the mar­itime and tourism in­dus­tries.

Rati­ram called on Gov­ern­ment to give the cost of the clean-up and a com­pre­hen­sive plan to re­as­sure To­bag­o­ni­ans they are “man­ag­ing the cri­sis re­spon­si­bly”. He al­so sought in­for­ma­tion on the sub­stance in­volved in the spill and the po­ten­tial con­se­quences for ma­rine ecosys­tems.

Mean­while, the Fish­er­men and Friends of Sea (FFOS) is query­ing what will be­come of the oil that is drift­ing north­west that hasn’t been con­tained.

FFOS added, “This dis­as­ter is yet an­oth­er rea­son why an ef­fec­tive na­tion­al radar net­work is need­ed. It un­der­scores the ur­gency of a col­lab­o­ra­tive Cari­com net­work with syn­chro­nised laws and penal­ties, emer­gency re­sponse, in­for­ma­tion shar­ing, and off­shore sur­veil­lance...”

FFOS has called for an­swers on the where­abouts of the tug that was pulling the barge, stress­ing that aban­don­ment of the hy­dro­car­bon tox­ic sub­stance which fouled To­ba­go’s coast­lines must be a crim­i­nal charge.

Cit­ing T&T’s laws and poli­cies to pro­tect against oil pol­lu­tion, the FFOS asked who will bear the clean up-costs and when will the tug’s own­ers in­form T&T of the vol­ume of crude oil that was be­ing trans­port­ed.

“The last time any­one was charged for an oil spill was in 2013, when the now de­funct Petrotrin was charged $20 mil­lion for spilling ,7000 bar­rels of bunker C fu­el which came ashore in La Brea. We es­ti­mate this To­ba­go spill is al­ready three times larg­er. Since then, there have been hun­dreds of spills, with an av­er­age of two per week, and Trinidad has nev­er charged any­one,” FFOS gen­er­al sec­re­tary Gary Aboud claimed.

The FFOS al­so asked when fish­er­folk will be com­pen­sat­ed and called for in­de­pen­dent as­sess­ment of the ef­fi­ca­cy of the booms and oth­er clean-up mea­sures.