Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine is de­mand­ing that the own­er of the ves­sel which ran aground along the coast off the Cove come for­ward and take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the oil spill that has dev­as­tat­ed the is­land’s shore­line and ecosys­tem.

At the same time, he is sug­gest­ing Gov­ern­ment may have with­held crit­i­cal in­for­ma­tion it had on the ves­sel ear­ly on and wants this cleared up.

The ves­sel, which was spot­ted spew­ing oil last Wednes­day morn­ing, was iden­ti­fied by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Coast Guard (TTCG) yes­ter­day.

In a re­lease, the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty said the TTCG con­firmed the in­volve­ment of two ves­sels: a tug boat iden­ti­fied as So­lo Creed and the over­turned barge. The min­istry said it was now work­ing on iden­ti­fy­ing the ves­sels and their own­ers.

It said in­ves­ti­ga­tions showed the ves­sels were head­ing to Guyana and had passed through Pana­ma but did not ar­rive as planned.

Guardian Me­dia sent ques­tions about Guyana’s in­volve­ment with the ves­sel to Guyana’s Min­istry of Nat­ur­al Re­sources PRO Makalia Prince.

She ac­knowl­edged the email last evening but had not sent re­spons­es up to press time.

Dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, Au­gus­tine said the THA was ready to talk com­pen­sa­tion and ex­pressed dis­ap­point­ment it took so long for some­one to con­firm the iden­ti­ty of the ves­sel.

“So you took that long to come for­ward and take own­er­ship of this. This is your ves­sel, and you have not ar­rived in To­ba­go yet to sit with the peo­ple who have been part of this clean-up?” he said.

We have a lot of ques­tions, and now is the best time to have those ques­tions an­swered. We need to know the quan­ti­ty and the ma­te­r­i­al you were trans­port­ing, so we know what we have been deal­ing with, what we have been walk­ing in, what we have been swim­ming in, what we have been try­ing to clean up from our shores.”

He added, “I want to know how much they would pay for this. You recog­nised that the tow ca­ble was bro­ken. You see it on all sorts of glob­al news, and it took you this long to re­al­ly come for­ward. We could have avoid­ed so much, and even as we speak and con­tain the hy­dro­car­bon in that area, the ves­sel con­tin­ues to leak the sub­stance.”

Au­gus­tine em­pha­sised that the THA needs to know the ca­pac­i­ty of the ves­sel and the vol­ume of oil it was trans­port­ing, so that ex­trac­tion can be­gin im­me­di­ate­ly to pre­vent fur­ther breach­es of the shore­line and ecosys­tems.

“We were able to save our par­adise be­cause this sit­u­a­tion should not re­sult in a par­adise lost, cer­tain­ly not for To­ba­go. We need those re­spon­si­ble to come clean, and we need those re­spon­si­ble to know that they have to pay for this mess.”

While he thanked the min­istry for re­leas­ing the ves­sel’s name, Au­gus­tine sug­gest­ed Gov­ern­ment may not have been forth­right with the in­for­ma­tion it had on the ves­sel, say­ing he found it co­in­ci­den­tal the in­for­ma­tion on its iden­ti­ty was made pub­lic short­ly af­ter he re­ceived it.

“The What­sApp mes­sage I got last night was that they were car­ry­ing 5,000 met­ric tonnes of fu­el. Is that true? It al­so said the own­er of this ves­sel is ac­tu­al­ly one of those try­ing to pur­chase the re­fin­ery down in Point Fortin. Is that true?”

When asked if he was in­sin­u­at­ing that the re­fin­ery deal may be linked to the ves­sel in­ci­dent, Au­gus­tine said, “I tend not to op­er­ate in the world of spec­u­la­tion, I tend to op­er­ate with just the facts. I have laid out the facts as I have them, and I have al­so point­ed out the ob­vi­ous co­in­ci­dence of me re­ceiv­ing in­for­ma­tion and some­one ask­ing me to look in­to this ves­sel.

“Then to­day, I see a press re­lease con­firm­ing the da­ta. Be­cause there is some cor­re­la­tion, I am du­ty-bound, on be­half of To­ba­go, to ask those ques­tions point­ed­ly and open­ly.”

In re­sponse to an­oth­er ques­tion, Au­gus­tine said the Of­fice of the Chief Sec­re­tary may have been dis­re­spect­ed over the Gov­ern­ment’s fail­ure to send of­fi­cial cor­re­spon­dence to the THA re­gard­ing the ves­sel’s iden­ti­ty be­fore re­leas­ing a pub­lic state­ment.

Mean­while, the re­sults of oil sam­ples tak­en by the In­sti­tute of Ma­rine Af­fairs (IMA) have not yet been re­turned to To­ba­go. How­ev­er, the IMA’s team is ex­pect­ed to re­turn to­mor­row.

Un­til then, Au­gus­tine said the in­ter­na­tion­al com­pa­ny Oil Spill Re­sponse Lim­it­ed (OS­RL), of which Trinidad and To­ba­go is a mem­ber, has a team in To­ba­go at no cost to the Gov­ern­ment. The team be­gan as­sess­ing the qual­i­ty con­trol of all af­fect­ed ar­eas soon af­ter ar­riv­ing on Mon­day night.

Al­though the is­land has re­ceived in­ter­na­tion­al help, Au­gus­tine not­ed that To­ba­go has not up­grad­ed to a tier two lev­el dis­as­ter. He de­scribed the col­lab­o­ra­tion with OS­RL as a “first lay­er”, as the sit­u­a­tion re­mains a na­tion­al dis­as­ter.

As of last night, some of the oil had moved 88 km away from To­ba­go wa­ters and was said to be close to threat­en­ing Grena­da. Au­gus­tine said he was ready to put Caribbean neigh­bours who may be af­fect­ed on alert.

Ed­i­tor's note: There is no oil re­fin­ery in Point Fortin. Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley was, in fact, re­fer­ring to the Petrotrin oil re­fin­ery in Pointe-a-Pierre.