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 since the Feb­ru­ary 7 oil spill from a cap­sized barge there. This was con­firmed by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day.

Row­ley was re­spond­ing to Cou­va South MP Rudy In­dars­ingh’s ques­tions about the fi­nan­cial costs in­curred by the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment, the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly and State en­ter­pris­es for the man­age­ment and clean-up of the spill.

In the in­ci­dent, caused when a 200-me­tre barge cap­sized off the Cove area, a sub­stance that ap­peared to be a liq­uid hy­dro­car­bon-based prod­uct was es­cap­ing from the ves­sel. Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed was tasked with the ma­jor re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of re­spond­ing to the spill in an op­er­a­tion that in­volved ob­tain­ing spe­cialised oil spill equip­ment, ma­chin­ery and ap­prox­i­mate­ly 200 per­son­nel.

“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 ... a few tens of thou­sands of bar­rels of dan­ger­ous liq­uid which for­tu­nate­ly so far has re­mained with­in the hull of the ves­sel,” Row­ley said.

“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 the Gov­ern­ment isn’t in a po­si­tion to in­di­cate the cost of the op­er­a­tion which is on­go­ing.

“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, 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.”

Di­rec­tor of the To­ba­go Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency (TEMA) Al­lan Stew­art told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that con­tain­ment of the re­main­ing bunker fu­el at the wreck­age site is near­ing com­ple­tion and the last traces of oil are be­ing care­ful­ly ex­tract­ed from the ves­sel and trans­ferred to an­oth­er ship.

The ship ar­rived in To­ba­go ap­prox­i­mate­ly five days ago and has since re­moved 3,200 bar­rels of hy­dro­car­bon from in­side the over­turned barge.

Stew­art said, “It is be­ing hosed to the shore by 100-di­am­e­ter hoses. These hoses are buoy­ant, and they will be placed in­to frac tanks.”

There are ap­prox­i­mate­ly ten 21,000-gal­lon frac tanks on stand­by to con­tain the fu­el in­side the ves­sel. The hy­dro­car­bons will be trans­port­ed to a tem­po­rary stor­age fa­cil­i­ty and then to the Port of Scar­bor­ough for trans­fer to an­oth­er ves­sel.

The To­ba­go Emer­gency Op­er­a­tions Cen­tre (TEOC) has low­ered the ac­ti­va­tion lev­el from or­ange to yel­low for Op­er­a­tion Gulf­stream but while ac­tiv­i­ty has de­creased, of­fi­cials re­main alert for new de­vel­op­ments.

In a re­lease yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, TEMA said pow­er wash­ing and clean­ing are be­ing done in cer­tain ar­eas, and the de-in­ven­to­ry process is on­go­ing at the Cove.

To­day marks 74 days since the barge ran aground off the coast of Cove, spew­ing bunker fu­el and dev­as­tat­ing 15 kilo­me­tres of shore­line.