SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

shar­lene.ram­per­sad@guardian.co.tt

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Franklin Khan has said the three-man team of ex­perts sent to in­spect the FSO Nabari­ma did not do any tech­ni­cal as­sess­ment of the ves­sel.

Dur­ing a news con­fer­ence host­ed by the Min­istry of For­eign Af­fairs yes­ter­day, Khan said there was no risk that the float­ing oil stor­age tanker could tilt or sink and cause an en­vi­ron­men­tal dis­as­ter.

The ves­sel, car­ry­ing 1.3 mil­lion bar­rels of crude oil, has been an­chored in Venezue­lan wa­ters, close to T&T for over a year.

Yes­ter­day re­spond­ing to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia, Khan said the team—a se­nior pe­tro­le­um en­gi­neer from the Min­istry of En­er­gy, an en­gi­neer­ing of­fi­cer from the Coast Guard and a Port State In­spec­tor from the Mar­itime Di­vi­sion of the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port—was not al­lowed to take any equip­ment to use in their in­spec­tion.

“We weren’t al­lowed to go with in­stru­ments as though we are reg­u­la­tors in the in­dus­try. We were mak­ing a trip that was co­or­di­nat­ed by Min­istry of For­eign Af­fairs. It was an in­ter­na­tion­al trip from one gov­ern­ment to an­oth­er and we were al­lowed to ob­serve and take notes to as­cer­tain the ve­rac­i­ty of what they have been telling us over the last month or so and we are quite com­fort­able with what we have seen,” Khan said.

Khan said a sam­ple of the stored oil was tak­en to be ‘fin­ger­print­ed’ so, in the event of an oil spill, it can be iden­ti­fied.

Asked if the team checked the ves­sel’s struc­tur­al in­tegri­ty, as the pho­tos re­leased from watch­dog group Fish­er­men and Friends of the Sea (FFOS) last Fri­day showed mas­sive rust spots, Khan said, “The team didn’t go and ask per­mis­sion to check the lev­el of cor­ro­sion, they did, in fact, in­di­cate that there some cor­ro­sion on the main deck but in an open ma­rine en­vi­ron­ment, most of that cor­ro­sion is su­per­fi­cial so once you con­tin­ue with your main­te­nance plan, which is re­al­ly scrub­bing with steel brush­es and paint­ing over, the ves­sel will come back to a state of ac­cept­abil­i­ty.”

He said rust on a ves­sel like the Nabari­ma was not un­usu­al and his team had found the Nabari­ma’s main­te­nance pro­gramme ac­cept­able.

When asked if his team could share pho­tos and videos of the ves­sel with the pub­lic, Khan de­ferred the ques­tion For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Dr Amery Browne.

Browne said there was noth­ing to share.

“This is a very sen­si­tive as­set of the Gov­ern­ment Venezuela. They con­sid­er their petro­chem­i­cal in­dus­tries as very se­cure in­dus­tries, they did not al­low the team, this is my un­der­stand­ing, to cap­ture pho­tos or videos but they did per­mit them, as Min­is­ter Khan in­di­cat­ed to ac­cess the var­i­ous spaces on the ves­sel and record their ob­ser­va­tions.”

Browne said he was told that on­ly the pho­tos of the sta­ble ves­sel were tak­en by the Venezue­lan au­thor­i­ties.

He said he would re­quest copies of those im­ages and videos to share with the pub­lic.

Browne said a re­quest has al­ready been sent to Venezue­lan au­thor­i­ties, re­quest­ing per­mis­sion for a fol­low-up vis­it from T&T’s team in a month.

In late Ju­ly, pho­tos show­ing the ves­sel’s en­gine room flood­ed with wa­ter were re­leased by PDVSA em­ploy­ees. Since then, the ves­sel has been the sub­ject of scruti­ny from many quar­ters.