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Khan: Assessment shows minimal risk from Nabarima 

by

#meta[ag-author]
20201021195133
20201021
The Nabarima tanker in the Gulf of Paria.

The Nabarima tanker in the Gulf of Paria.

SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

shar­lene.ram­per­sad@guardian.co.tt

 

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Franklin Khan says an as­sess­ment from the Min­istry’s team of ex­perts of the Venezue­lan oil tanker, the FSO Nabari­ma has shown there was min­i­mal to no risk of an oil spill from the ves­sel.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day evening, Khan said he had on­ly just re­ceived the re­port from the three-man team who were sent on Tues­day to as­sess the con­di­tion of the Nabari­ma af­ter con­cerns were raised about its sta­bil­i­ty by en­vi­ron­men­tal watch­dog group, Fish­er­men and Friends of the Sea (FFOS).

In an ex­pe­di­tion last Fri­day, the FFOS took pho­tos and videos show­ing the ves­sel list­ing se­vere­ly to one side and held in place by an­chor chains.

But Khan said his team did not re­port see­ing any tilt on Tues­day.

“I spoke to the team at length on that, they said they can on­ly re­port what they have seen, the team of ex­perts in­cludes guys who have great ex­per­tise in the sta­bil­i­ty of ves­sels and they have con­firmed that the ves­sel is up­right, it is sta­ble and there is very lit­tle min­i­mal if any risk of tilt­ing or sink­ing…there is very min­i­mal risk of an oil spill,” Khan said.

He said the team could on­ly re­port on what they saw on dur­ing their vis­it.

Al­though he promised a full re­port would be pre­sent­ed to the me­dia and the pub­lic to­day, Khan gave a break­down of the con­clu­sions of the re­port giv­en to him.

Franklyn Khan

Franklyn Khan

M.Gonzales

“The con­clu­sions are as fol­lows: the FSO Nabari­ma is up­right and sta­ble with no vis­i­ble tilt and there is no im­mi­nent risk of tilt­ing or sink­ing. There was no wa­ter egress vis­i­ble on the ves­sel to the team, it was con­firmed that dur­ing the in­ci­dent when the en­gine room was flood­ed, as was re­port­ed in Sep­tem­ber, there was no mix­ing of oil and bilge wa­ter, the oil did not leak from the con­tain­ment tank - this im­plies that the dou­ble hulls are in­tact and pos­es min­i­mum risk of an oil spill at this time.”

He said the team al­so re­port­ed that ma­jor main­te­nance was on­go­ing on the ves­sel - with pumps and elec­tri­cal mo­tors be­ing re­paired and re­placed “as need­ed.”

He said the re­port states the main­te­nance pro­gramme was “quite sat­is­fac­to­ry.”

Khan said among the rec­om­men­da­tions made by the team was that per­mis­sion should be sought from the Venezue­lan au­thor­i­ties for a fol­low-up vis­it in a month’s time to en­sure the sit­u­a­tion has not changed for the worse.

On Tues­day, PDVSA be­gan a ship-to-ship trans­fer of the crude to its Afra­max ship, Icaro.

But Khan said the re­port rec­om­mend­ed that the trans­fer of oil from the ves­sel be done us­ing a larg­er ves­sel. He said Icaro can on­ly hold a quar­ter of the Nabari­ma’s 1.3 mil­lion bar­rel ca­pac­i­ty at a time.

“The team saw the Venezue­lans and PDVSA had start­ed to of­fload the ves­sel, how­ev­er, the of­fload­ing process is very te­dious as it is be­ing trans­ferred to a much small­er ves­sel with a ca­pac­i­ty of just about 300,000 where­as the FSO Nabari­ma has a ca­pac­i­ty of 1.3 mil­lion bar­rels, there­fore, it will take about four trips to com­plete. The team is rec­om­mend­ing that ef­forts should be made to do a ship-to-ship trans­fer with a larg­er tanker to re­duce the time and the lo­gis­tics of the trans­fer and this will re­duce the pos­si­bil­i­ty of any en­vi­ron­men­tal in­ci­dent oc­cur­ring in the Gulf of Paria,” Khan said.


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