There were re­ports yes­ter­day that Venezuela’s state-owned oil com­pa­ny Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) was prepar­ing to un­load crude from the FSO Nabari­ma, the float­ing stor­age fa­cil­i­ty that has been list­ing dan­ger­ous­ly in the Gulf of Paria for sev­er­al weeks. How­ev­er, it was not en­tire­ly clear how the trans­fer would be made.

Two tugs fre­quent­ly used to fa­cil­i­tate op­er­a­tions were spot­ted near the ves­sel on Mon­day and PDVSA’s Pana­ma-flagged Afra­max Icaro is re­port­ed­ly en route to the Paria port of Guiria to par­tic­i­pate in a crude trans­fer, ac­cord­ing to ship-track­ing da­ta and a lo­cal con­trac­tor fa­mil­iar with the planned trans­fer.

The Icaro is one of sev­er­al tankers sub­ject to US sanc­tions im­posed on Venezuela but of­fi­cials of the US Em­bassy in Port-of-Spain said the sanc­tions do not pre­vent the in­spec­tion and as­sis­tance to the ves­sel, as they do not tar­get “mat­ters of safe­ty, en­vi­ron­men­tal, or hu­man­i­tar­i­an con­cerns.”

“We strong­ly sup­port im­me­di­ate ac­tions to bring the Nabari­ma up to in­ter­na­tion­al safe­ty stan­dards and avoid pos­si­ble en­vi­ron­men­tal harm, which could neg­a­tive­ly im­pact not on­ly the Venezue­lan peo­ple but al­so those in near­by coun­tries. PDVSA has a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to take ac­tion to avoid an en­vi­ron­men­tal dis­as­ter in Venezue­lan wa­ters,” em­bassy of­fi­cials said.

These de­vel­op­ments come amidst grow­ing con­cern about a po­ten­tial eco­log­i­cal dis­as­ter if the mil­lions of gal­lons of oil stored on­board the Nabari­ma should spill in­to the Gulf of Paria.

Uni­tary Fed­er­a­tion of Pe­tro­le­um Work­ers of Venezuela (Fut­pv) ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor Eu­d­is Girót has warned that the ves­sel pos­es “a great threat to na­ture and world-ecol­o­gy” be­cause it is lo­cat­ed at the mouth of the Orinoco, ad­ja­cent to the Gulf of Paria in the Caribbean Sea and on the At­lantic bor­der.

In a state­ment on his Twit­ter ac­count, Girót said US sanc­tions should not be a hin­drance to solv­ing prob­lems with the ves­sel.

“PDVSA and Italy’s ENI must re­move the oil from the Nabari­ma. Sanc­tions must not be an ex­cuse. The oil must be with­drawn in an emer­gency to avoid a glob­al eco­log­i­cal cat­a­stro­phe. They must use their own ships (Nereo, Pro­teus, Zeus, Icarus) and leave it stored in our ter­ri­to­ry,” he said.

In an­oth­er tweet, Girót, de­scrib­ing the ves­sel’s con­di­tion, wrote: “The prob­lems in the ship’s ma­chine room con­tin­ue, portable bilge pumps, half elec­tric gen­er­a­tors, locked mo­torised valves, in­hu­mane work­ing con­di­tions. It is a per­ma­nent sit­u­a­tion, there is no re­li­a­bil­i­ty in the process­es.”

He called for a “pow­er­ful na­tion­al move­ment which must pro­mote the so­lu­tion to the se­ri­ous dan­ger of Nabari­ma. The life of the plan­et and the work­ers is in dan­ger. PDVSA and ENI must re­move the oil from the ves­sel and avoid a glob­al eco­log­i­cal cat­a­stro­phe.”

Girót was al­so crit­i­cal of PDVSA’s han­dling of the sit­u­a­tion.

“The com­plaint was made by the work­ers on Au­gust 30, 2020, and the prob­lem has been deep­en­ing. PDVSA has re­peat­ed­ly de­nied this trag­ic re­al­i­ty and de­vel­oped a cam­paign of in­famy, dis­qual­i­fy­ing the com­plaint, ac­cus­ing the work­ers of be­ing trai­tors and sabo­teurs.”

Girót said the trans­fer of the crude from Nabari­ma to oth­er ships is the best op­tion.

“In the Nabari­ma there are 1,800,000 bar­rels. That fits in two medi­um-ca­pac­i­ty tankers. The po­si­tion should be to re­move it from the Nabari­ma and place it in a safe tanker that can be in the Venezue­lan sea, ” he said.

Al­so warn­ing about the grav­i­ty of the sit­u­a­tion was Ed­uar­do Klein, co­or­di­na­tor of the Cen­tre for Ma­rine Bio­di­ver­si­ty at Venezuela’s Simón Bolí­var Uni­ver­si­ty. How­ev­er, he said the “prob­a­bil­i­ty that every­thing will spill is very low be­cause not every­thing is in a sin­gle con­tain­er.”

Klein said the over­flow of thou­sands of bar­rels of oil in the area would not on­ly af­fect the Paria penin­su­la but would flow to the north and af­fect T&T. He has been us­ing satel­lite im­ages to study the im­pact of oil spills in Venezuela and re­cent­ly did an analy­sis of what could hap­pen if 20,000 bar­rels of crude were spilt from the Nabari­ma. He said it would be “an en­vi­ron­men­tal cat­a­stro­phe.”

Klein’s oil spill sim­u­la­tion is based on a GNOME-NOAA mod­el. He said the tra­jec­to­ry of a spill de­pends on winds and high tides in the Gulf of Paria. He said the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment must act to con­tain the spill as soon as pos­si­ble and should de­vel­op a con­tin­gency plan.—With re­port­ing by Raphael Lall