KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter
kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Six months af­ter wreak­ing en­vi­ron­men­tal hav­oc on To­ba­go’s Wind­ward coast, the mys­te­ri­ous Gulf­stream barge is in Port-of-Spain and un­der­go­ing prepa­ra­tion for stor­age.

The 100-me­tre-long ves­sel be­came the sub­ject of en­vi­ron­men­tal con­cern and po­lit­i­cal de­bate af­ter Feb­ru­ary 7 when the To­ba­go Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency re­ceived re­ports of a cap­sized ship off the coast of Cove.

A thick, oil-like sub­stance was wash­ing up on near­by coast­lines and span­ning beach­es from Rock­ley Bay to Ca­noe Bay. Lab­o­ra­to­ry tests re­vealed that it was bunker fu­el. It was un­clear when the barge cap­sized, what hap­pened, who was on board, who owned it and its des­ti­na­tion.

The Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries (MEEI) re­port­ed that it suc­cess­ful­ly float­ed the par­tial­ly sunken barge at 11.54 pm on Mon­day. In a me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day, the MEEI said that two tug boats from the Na­tion­al En­er­gy Cor­po­ra­tion towed the barge from Cove, To­ba­go, to Sea Lots, in its over­turned state, in a 30-hour voy­age.

The MEEI said the op­er­a­tion fol­lowed the di­rec­tion of tech­ni­cal ex­perts from T&T Sal­vage LLC and QT En­vi­ron­men­tal. A Pol­lu­tion Task Force com­pris­ing lo­cal re­spon­ders and crews equipped with NOFI Cur­rent Buster Sys­tems and Rapid De­ploy­ment Skim­mer Sys­tems (RDSS) at­tached to QT En­vi­ron­men­tal fol­lowed the tugs to fa­cil­i­tate the im­me­di­ate cap­ture and re­cov­ery of any resid­ual hy­dro­car­bons if need­ed.

“The MEEI re­port­ed that the tran­sit of the barge pro­gressed smooth­ly and on sched­ule. AD­CI-cer­ti­fied divers com­plet­ed sur­vey as­sess­ments of the barge at 5.25 pm on Au­gust 21 off Cha­cachacare, Trinidad.

The re­sults of this sur­vey pro­vid­ed the as­sur­ance need­ed for the ves­sel to en­ter the Sea Lots chan­nel. The last stage of the jour­ney to Sea Lots, Port-of-Spain, was com­plet­ed at 6.43 am,” the me­dia re­lease stat­ed.

The MEEI said weath­er con­di­tions cou­pled with high and low tides were two prin­ci­pal fac­tors gov­ern­ing the tim­ing and ex­e­cu­tion of the re-float and tow ex­er­cise.
The MEEI said the last phase of the op­er­a­tion en­tails tech­ni­cal ex­perts prepar­ing the barge for stor­age. They will then of­fi­cial­ly hand over the barge to the Di­rec­tor of Mar­itime Ser­vices Lt Cm­dr Ronald Al­fred, as the Prin­ci­pal Re­ceiv­er of Wrecks.

“The Prin­ci­pal Re­ceiv­er of Wrecks is em­pow­ered un­der the Ship­ping Act to ex­er­cise gen­er­al di­rec­tion and su­per­vi­sion over all mat­ters re­lat­ing to wrecks and sal­vage. This han­dover will rep­re­sent the com­ple­tion of the scope of op­er­a­tions han­dled by the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries and its in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners, T&T Sal­vage/QT En­vi­ron­men­tal,” the MEEI said.

Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries Stu­art Young thanked every­one in­volved in the oil spill con­tain­ment ef­forts and trans­port­ed the Gulf­stream safe­ly to Trinidad for dis­pos­al. Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to con­tact Young to as­cer­tain whether au­thor­i­ties iden­ti­fied and con­tact­ed the own­er of the barge and if the State can move ahead with a law­suit. How­ev­er, there was no re­sponse.