Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley says while the To­ba­go oil spill isn’t com­plete­ly un­der con­trol, it re­mains man­age­able and the sit­u­a­tion should im­prove with ad­di­tion­al re­sources.

Dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence in To­ba­go, af­ter he com­plet­ed tours of the af­fect­ed ar­eas over the week­end, Row­ley said the dis­as­ter re­mains at a tier two lev­el and of­fi­cials are do­ing all in their pow­er to iden­ti­fy the own­ers of the over­turned ves­sel and min­imise the spills im­pact.

The ves­sel, iden­ti­fied as Gulf­stream, over­turned along the coast off the Cove last Wednes­day, leav­ing miles of coast­line along the west of the is­land blan­ket­ed in oil leak­ing from its hull

Yes­ter­day, Row­ley ad­mit­ted the au­thor­i­ties still don’t know what the ves­sel con­tains.

“What we do know, it ap­pears to be bro­ken hav­ing made con­tact here and is leak­ing some kind of hy­dro­car­bon that is foul­ing the wa­ter and the coast­line. That ves­sel could have come to us from any kind of op­er­a­tion, es­pe­cial­ly if the op­er­a­tion is il­lic­it,” he said.

He said the clean-up team is still in the con­tain­ment stage.

And as the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly awaits the test re­sults from sam­ples tak­en ear­li­er this week, Row­ley stressed how im­por­tant it was to move from the con­tain­ment phase to the emp­ty­ing of the ves­sel to pre­vent con­tin­u­ous spill in­to the wa­ters.

“This phase will re­main as long as the ves­sel is there and is a threat with the con­tents that can foul our en­vi­ron­ment. But then we would want to move from that stage to the stage of emp­ty­ing the ves­sel.”

He ad­mit­ted the coun­try may need to seek in­ter­na­tion­al as­sis­tance if the sit­u­a­tion be­comes out of con­trol.

“We will have to move rel­a­tive­ly quick­ly to de­ter­min­ing what we do next, which is to bring the ves­sel to a po­si­tion where it does not pose a threat at the na­tion­al lev­el,” the PM said.

“We may re­quire help be­cause once we start talk­ing about sal­vaging, which is to get the ves­sel in a sit­u­a­tion where we can con­trol what goes on, we have to have out­side help.”

He fur­ther ex­plained that he was hap­py the spill start­ed in an iso­lat­ed area, pre­vent­ing more ex­ten­sive dam­age.

How­ev­er, he couldn’t say if there was a set dead­line to have the ves­sel re­moved and the sit­u­a­tion un­der com­plete con­trol.

“Had it been a lit­tle fur­ther west, in the Crown Point area, much of that spill may eas­i­ly have gone in­to the ma­rine park and in­to the riv­er Ny­lon Pool. That too would have been a ma­jor dis­as­ter. So we have to thank God for small mer­cies,” he not­ed.

While the ves­sel’s ori­gin, own­er­ship and con­tents re­main a mys­tery, Row­ley said the team is do­ing their best to pre­vent the sit­u­a­tion from wors­en­ing.

“We are do­ing all that is pos­si­ble to an­swer these ques­tions from mo­bil­is­ing the con­tin­gency plan. Every­thing that needs to be done has been, to this point, done and is be­ing done and will be done to ame­lio­rate and min­imise and even­tu­al­ly elim­i­nate the threat,” he said.

“What we have to do now is to do what is re­quired to bring some con­trol to the sit­u­a­tion, clean­ing the beach­es was good. But if stuff is be­ing poured out on a con­tin­u­ous ba­sis, that is just speed­ing up in bird clean­ing and restora­tion can on­ly se­ri­ous­ly be­gin af­ter we have brought the sit­u­a­tion un­der con­trol. Right now, the sit­u­a­tion is not un­der con­trol. But it ap­pears to be un­der suf­fi­cient con­trol that we think that we can man­age.”

Lament­ing the fi­nan­cial con­straints and the un­planned na­ture of the in­ci­dent, he said there is a need to im­prove the coun­try’s fleet ca­pa­bil­i­ties, an­nounc­ing plans for ma­jor ves­sel re­fur­bish­ments and the es­tab­lish­ment of a new Coast Guard fa­cil­i­ty in To­ba­go, pos­si­bly at Char­lot­teville.

THA Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine mean­while said the divers had not been able to cap the leak. As a re­sult, he said the team is work­ing to find a way to ex­tract all the oil from the ves­sel.

Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries Stu­art Young, as well as Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan, were present dur­ing the tour.

Mean­while, the In­sti­tute of ma­rine Af­fairs, re­spond­ing to in­for­ma­tion in a Sun­day Guardian ar­ti­cle yes­ter­day, said it does not have spe­cial­ist in­dus­tri­al or com­mer­cial divers on staff. This, it said, meant it could not have, nor was it asked to have its divers plug the spill to the cap­sized ves­sel off the To­ba­go shore­line.

The in­sti­tute said it is a ma­rine re­search or­gan­i­sa­tion of which, for this event, its work is pri­mar­i­ly to con­duct re­search, con­ser­va­tion, restora­tion and re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion where pos­si­ble.