Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

The So­lo Creed tug, the ves­sel at the cen­tre of To­ba­go’s 2024 oil spill dis­as­ter, broke free from cus­tody in An­go­la last year, in an es­cape that was nev­er dis­closed to the pub­lic. The ship re­mains miss­ing but En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal in­sists that Gov­ern­ment is still hunt­ing for the ves­sel’s own­er to pur­sue To­ba­go’s mul­ti-mil­lion-dol­lar dam­age claim.

Ac­cord­ing to the UN-linked In­ter­na­tion­al Oil Pol­lu­tion Com­pen­sa­tion Funds (IOPC), the body over­see­ing spill com­pen­sa­tion, “just be­fore the No­vem­ber 2024 ses­sions of the gov­ern­ing bod­ies, the tug had es­caped ar­rest, and it has not since been lo­cat­ed.”

That ad­mis­sion was buried in meet­ing min­utes but pub­lished in an IOPC doc­u­ment in May.

The tug had been de­tained by the An­golan Navy in May 2024, months af­ter the Feb­ru­ary 7 spill off To­ba­go, and for­mal­ly ar­rest­ed by an An­golan court in Oc­to­ber. By the time IOPC met in Lon­don in ear­ly No­vem­ber, how­ev­er, it was gone.

The IOPC, in re­sponse to Guardian Me­dia’s ques­tions for clar­i­fi­ca­tion ear­li­er this week, said, “The Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go sub­se­quent­ly in­formed the IOPC Funds of this de­vel­op­ment and fur­ther con­firmed that it had en­gaged the ser­vices of a com­pa­ny to pro­vide satel­lite sur­veil­lance for the pur­pos­es of de­ter­min­ing the where­abouts of the tug. As at 29 Au­gust 2025, we un­der­stand that the ves­sel has not been de­tect­ed.”

The body al­so not­ed that “any de­vel­op­ments in the Gulf­stream in­ci­dent will be re­port­ed at the No­vem­ber 2025 ses­sion of the 1992 Fund Ex­ec­u­tive Com­mit­tee. A doc­u­ment on this mat­ter is ex­pect­ed to be pub­lished in ad­vance of the meet­ing on the IOPC Funds web­site, most like­ly dur­ing Sep­tem­ber.”

The So­lo Creed was tow­ing the Gulf­stream barge when it cap­sized off To­ba­go in 2024, spilling thou­sands of tons of fu­el along the coast­line.

The barge was towed from its Cove wreck­age site to Sea Lots in Trinidad to be bro­ken up for scrap.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed Sea Lots’ ship grave­yard on Thurs­day, work­men, stand­ing on the barge’s flat-bot­tomed hull, were busy dis­man­tling the 300 foot over­turned ves­sel.

The barge was part­ly sub­merged, with a net­ting draped over it. Not much of its ap­pear­ance had changed since it crashed in­to the coast of Cove al­most two years ago.

The barge has since been sold, ac­cord­ing to IOPC’s April re­port.

“The Ex­ec­u­tive Com­mit­tee not­ed that the barge had been sold for scrap in March 2025.”

Mean­while, com­pen­sa­tion claims con­tin­ue to grow.

“As at 28 April 2025, 290 claims for com­pen­sa­tion had been sub­mit­ted, amount­ing to US$30.3 mil­lion. These in­clud­ed 171 fish­eries claims from To­ba­go, as well as claims for clean‑up op­er­a­tions and oth­er loss­es. The Sec­re­tari­at had al­so re­ceived claims from the au­thor­i­ties of [the coun­try] Bonaire to­talling £13,633, EUR 45,328, and US $3,434 for the cost of aer­i­al sur­veil­lance and beach clean‑up.

“Fur­ther claims are ex­pect­ed in re­spect of the oil re­cov­ery op­er­a­tions from the barge and for tourism loss­es, but no es­ti­mates are avail­able at this stage.”

Around the time of the spill, Guardian Me­dia re­vealed, in an ex­clu­sive in­ves­ti­ga­tion with Belling­cat in 2024, that Niger­ian busi­ness­man Abra­ham Olalekan had come for­ward claim­ing own­er­ship of both the tug and barge. He pre­sent­ed a pur­port­ed bill of sale dat­ed Au­gust 28, 2023, but it was not ver­i­fied. De­spite as­ser­tions from a Melaj Off­shore di­rec­tor that Olalekan was not con­nect­ed, he con­tin­ued to claim own­er­ship, al­though of­fi­cial own­er­ship re­mains un­con­firmed.

Con­tact­ed on the is­sue, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Mooni­lal said he was aware the ship had es­caped.

“Yes, I am aware. Through mar­itime ser­vices di­vi­sion, we are col­lab­o­rat­ing to lo­cate the ves­sel us­ing rel­e­vant tech­nol­o­gy and an ex­pert agency. The own­er­ship of that ves­sel has not been con­firmed and it is un­der ac­tive in­ves­ti­ga­tion at this time.”

He added that the re­cov­ered oil has been sold, and com­pen­sa­tion process­es, led by the IOPC in part­ner­ship with the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly, are un­der­way. He al­so said T&T will con­tin­ue to pur­sue its $244 mil­lion claim. This le­gal pur­suit will hap­pen when­ev­er the ves­sel is found and the own­er is iden­ti­fied.

“IOPC will vis­it in ear­ly Sep­tem­ber, very soon, at which time I will meet them and con­tin­ue dis­cus­sions on re­solv­ing this mat­ter,” Mooni­lal said.

The THA has al­ready spent over $72.1 mil­lion on the oil spill clean-up, ex­ceed­ing the $50 mil­lion orig­i­nal­ly al­lo­cat­ed by Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment in 2024.