Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

Three months af­ter a wrecked barge caused a ma­jor oil spill off the coast of Cove in To­ba­go in May, the Gov­ern­ment says it has re­ceived in­for­ma­tion that the tug So­lo Creed, which was tow­ing the barge, may have been de­tained by au­thor­i­ties in An­go­la.

In Feb­ru­ary, of­fi­cials con­firmed the oil spill was caused by two ves­sels - a tug boat iden­ti­fied as So­lo Creed that was tow­ing a barge named Gulf­stream when it over­turned. The ex­act own­ers are yet to be iden­ti­fied.

The Gov­ern­ment said in­ves­ti­ga­tions showed the ves­sels were head­ing to Guyana and had passed through Pana­ma but did not ar­rive as planned.

In a re­lease yes­ter­day, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young said he had re­quest­ed that of­fi­cial cor­re­spon­dence be sent via the Min­istry of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs and the Mar­itime Ser­vices Di­vi­sion of the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port to An­golan au­thor­i­ties, to ver­i­fy the in­for­ma­tion that has come to hand.

“The Trinidad and To­ba­go Coast Guard is al­so as­sist­ing in the ex­er­cise to ver­i­fy the lo­ca­tion of the So­lo Creed,” the re­lease said.

It added, “The Gov­ern­ment is com­mit­ted to con­tin­u­ing its pur­suit of those re­spon­si­ble for the oil spill in To­ba­go and will con­tin­ue to keep the pub­lic in­formed of ma­te­r­i­al de­vel­op­ments.”

In March, Niger­ian busi­ness­man Abra­ham Olalekan claimed own­er­ship of the barge and tug af­ter an in­ves­ti­ga­tion by Guardian Me­dia and Belling­cat in­to the Feb­ru­ary 7 oil spill. Olalekan claimed to have pur­chased the tug­boat and pro­vid­ed a sup­posed bill of sale for the Gulf­stream and the So­lo Creed.

At that time, Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine promised to com­ment on this new de­vel­op­ment but nev­er re­spond­ed to re­porters on it. How­ev­er, he said that civ­il ac­tion would be tak­en against those re­spon­si­ble for the in­ci­dent, al­though who those par­ties are is not yet clear. 

Au­gus­tine said the THA planned to launch a le­gal bat­tle for the dam­age caused to To­ba­go and its peo­ple once the re­spon­si­ble par­ties were iden­ti­fied.

Mean­while, To­ba­go Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency di­rec­tor Al­lan Stew­art said the con­tain­ment of the oil was near­ing com­ple­tion. Last week, he ap­prox­i­mat­ed 2,000 bar­rels left in the barge.
Con­tact­ed for a com­ment yes­ter­day, he said he could not pro­vide an up­date at the time.

Mes­sages to En­er­gy Min­is­ter Young went unan­swered yes­ter­day.
Au­gus­tine al­so could not be reached for com­ment.