Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

The ves­sel tow­ing the barge that cap­sized and spilled oil off To­ba­go has not yet been found but in­for­ma­tion has been re­ceived in Guyana about who was in­volved in im­port­ing car­go, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said yes­ter­day at a me­dia con­fer­ence at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port.

Row­ley, who held the con­fer­ence on his re­turn from at­tend­ing the Guyana En­er­gy Con­fer­ence and the 46th Cari­com Heads of Gov­ern­ment Meet­ing, said the oil spill was wide­ly known by Cari­com col­leagues and many of them de­scribed it as the type of in­ci­dent Caribbean coun­tries are ex­posed to from ves­sels tran­sit­ing re­gion­al wa­ters.

“Oil spills are a risk we live with,” the PM said.

“We’ve suf­fered some sig­nif­i­cant dam­age and are tak­ing steps to treat with it.”

With re­spect to find­ing out who is in­volved, Row­ley said, “The wreck in Trinidad and To­ba­go’s ter­ri­to­ry so far has no own­er. Who­ev­er cut it loose or lost it in the ocean ... there are cer­tain kinds of laws that cov­er that. If you lose some­thing in the ocean it be­comes a wreck and it be­comes avail­able to Tom Dick and Har­ry.

“But the ves­sel that was do­ing the tow­ing, I don’t know that we’ve found that ves­sel yet but we did get in­for­ma­tion in Guyana on who was in­volved in im­port­ing a car­go. That in­for­ma­tion has been shared back here in Trinidad and To­ba­go and whether the car­go that was lost and found our shores is the car­go that they were im­port­ing, is yet to be fi­nal­ly con­firmed.”

Row­ley said there is no li­a­bil­i­ty on Guyana’s part even if it turned out to be their car­go, be­cause it was lost on the high seas.

“So, the one area that we’re to pur­sue is who was in fact trans­port­ing the car­go and to de­ter­mine what li­a­bil­i­ties ex­ist there if we can find that per­son, be­cause if it was the car­go, one has to de­ter­mine it,” he said.

“And of course, if it was not the car­go, as the name of the ves­sel is shared by 300 ves­sels ... so all these com­pli­ca­tions ex­ist.”

On the is­sue of lo­cat­ing who­ev­er cut the ves­sel loose in the sea, Row­ley ex­plained: “It is a com­pli­cat­ed ex­er­cise to chase that down and to de­ter­mine you have a li­a­bil­i­ty and to con­firm that and take it to a court of law.

“Right now we’re fo­cus­ing on en­sur­ing that the pol­lu­tant has min­i­mal ef­fect on our coast­line. Min­is­ter Young would have spo­ken on what we’ve done so far. We’ve ob­tained in­ter­na­tion­al help and have an ac­tion plan which is be­ing ex­e­cut­ed and the clean-up is oc­cur­ring in To­ba­go.”

He added, “So I can’t tell you much more than that, ex­cept we did find out who is im­port­ing a car­go like that and whether we de­ter­mine that that was the car­go or not is an­oth­er sto­ry. But it doesn’t cre­ate a li­a­bil­i­ty at Cari­com or in Guyana.”

He said the barge has to be right­ed and the ex­per­tise to do it has been found and that work pro­gramme is un­der­way.