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Sunday, June 15, 2025

Farley accuses Govt of hiding info on oil spill vessel

Wants owners of Solo Creed to own up, pay up

by

Elizabeth Gonzales
486 days ago
20240215
THA Chief Secretary Farley Augustine addresses journalists during a media conference at the Stage in the Sea in Scarborough, Tobago, yesterday. Also in picture, from left back are ATFA vice president Junior Quashie, ATFA president Curtis Douglas and TEMA head Allan Stewart.

THA Chief Secretary Farley Augustine addresses journalists during a media conference at the Stage in the Sea in Scarborough, Tobago, yesterday. Also in picture, from left back are ATFA vice president Junior Quashie, ATFA president Curtis Douglas and TEMA head Allan Stewart.

VINDRA GOPAUL-BOODAN

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.


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