Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

The En­er­gy Min­istry says it hopes to re­coup an es­ti­mat­ed TT$244 mil­lion from the own­er/s of the tug­boat So­lo Creed, which was re­spon­si­ble for aban­don­ing the cap­sized Gulf­stream barge that caused a ma­jor oil spill in To­ba­go in Feb­ru­ary.

In a me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day, the min­istry said the ‘ar­rest’ of the tug­boat in An­go­la was a step to­ward re­cov­er­ing the monies. The to­tal cost of the dam­age was still be­ing tab­u­lat­ed, the re­lease said.

“The Tug So­lo Creed was or­dered to be ar­rest­ed in Lu­an­da, An­go­la and con­se­quent­ly will not be al­lowed to leave that ju­ris­dic­tion un­less se­cu­ri­ty is lodged to se­cure the in­ter­est of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go. That se­cu­ri­ty will pro­vide pro­tec­tion to­wards sat­is­fy­ing the claim and com­pen­sate for the dam­age re­sult­ing from the oil spill off To­ba­go dur­ing the tow­ing op­er­a­tions of the barge in Feb­ru­ary,” the re­lease said.

Al­though the State hopes to col­lect from the own­er/s of the tug­boat, the re­lease said it would still pur­sue com­pen­sa­tion from the In­ter­na­tion­al Oil Pol­lu­tion Com­pen­sa­tion (IOPC) Fund.

The Feb­ru­ary 7 oil spill af­fect­ed To­ba­go’s coast­line be­tween Scar­bor­ough and Cove, af­ter over 50,000 bar­rels of hy­dro­car­bon leaked from the Gulf­stream.

On Feb­ru­ary 5, the ship’s Au­to­mat­ic Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion Sys­tem (AIS) lo­ca­tion broad­cast was switched off, and two days lat­er, fu­el be­gan leak­ing from the over­turned, clear­ly aban­doned barge.