GAIL ALEXAN­DER

There’s been no word from the En­er­gy Min­istry on its ver­i­fi­ca­tion of the dam­aged oil tanker FSO Nabari­ma in the Gulf of Paria - but an en­er­gy sec­tor stake­hold­er has ad­vised that booms could be placed around the ves­sel to pre­vent oil spread in the event of a spill.

That ad­vice came yes­ter­day from Tiger Tanks (Trinidad) gen­er­al man­ag­er De­nis Lat­iff. Tiger Tanks is among En­er­gy Min­istry stake­hold­ers and the com­pa­ny is among re­spon­ders to is­sues like spills.

The min­istry said last week it was seek­ing in­de­pen­dent ver­i­fi­ca­tion of the sta­tus of the float­ing stor­age ves­sel af­ter in­ter­na­tion­al re­ports quot­ing Venezue­lan labour lead­ers about leaks on the Nabari­ma.

It holds 1.3 mil­lion bar­rels of oil and is op­er­at­ed by Venezue­lan state oil com­pa­ny PDVSA. It was re­port­ed to be list­ing to the right and tak­ing in wa­ter.

The Off­shore En­gi­neer web­site last Sat­ur­day stat­ed that in Ju­ly the ves­sel pre­sent­ed an eight per cent in­cline that cre­at­ed the risk of a spill and in late Au­gust a sea­wa­ter leak led to en­gine room flood­ing. The OE web­site stat­ed both is­sues were re­solved.

Heavy in­ter­na­tion­al re­port­ing on the ves­sel’s sit­u­a­tion prompt­ed PDVSA’s off­shore ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor Pe­dro Figuera to say last week that the ves­sel had “com­plied with en­vi­ron­men­tal and op­er­a­tional stan­dards and its con­di­tions of nor­mal­cy and op­er­a­tional re­li­a­bil­i­ty have been deemed sat­is­fac­to­ry,”

Venezuela was plan­ning to re­move the oil car­go to an­oth­er ves­sel. But there’s been no word on that to date. Some in­ter­na­tion­al sources have spec­u­lat­ed there is dif­fi­cul­ty to get a ves­sel due to the Unit­ed States’ sanc­tions against Venezuela.

Yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, con­cerns about the ves­sel’s sta­bil­i­ty rose afresh among fish­er­men along T&T’s west coasts af­ter a cir­cu­lat­ing video on­line of T&T na­tion­als in boats point­ing out an oil spill in the sea.

The video was sent to En­er­gy Min­is­ter Franklin Khan who didn’t re­spond on whether the video was cur­rent or old.

But Or­ange Val­ley Fish­ing As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Im­ti­az Ali said, “We saw it and (yes­ter­day morn­ing) we spoke with (South­ern) fish­ing as­so­ci­a­tions. But we have no con­fir­ma­tion of when it was.

“Strange­ly enough, how­ev­er, our boats at Car­li Bay were af­fect­ed by oil in the wa­ter three weeks ago. How­ev­er, we don’t know the source of that oil.

“We’re very con­cerned about the Nabari­ma’s sit­u­a­tion and any oil spill threat. We didn’t work for a month in 2018 when the well­head on a rig (called the Christ­mas Tree) blew in 2018 and there was a spill.

“We were promised re­lief pack­ages and up to now we haven’t got­ten that. Much less if some­thing hap­pens now to af­fect our fish­ing grounds. Any oil spill from a tanker the size of the Nabari­ma would be car­ried by the cur­rent all the way up north, so it could be more than just us be­ing af­fect­ed.”

Louis Padarath, of the Ce­dros Fish­ing As­so­ci­a­tion, said he hadn’t seen the video but said the wa­ters around Granville were clear and there was no sign of oil.

Mean­while, Tiger Tanks’ Lat­iff told the T&T Guardian that he was mon­i­tor­ing the sit­u­a­tion close­ly since an­oth­er oil spill had oc­curred in Mau­ri­tius re­cent­ly where a tanker broke in half and that coun­try’s coral reefs were dam­aged.

Lat­iff added, “T&T has a good oil spill con­tin­gency but tim­ing and plan­ning is every­thing in these mat­ters.”