Gail Alexan­der

Venezue­lan and T&T au­thor­i­ties are con­firm­ing a date for in­spec­tion of the dam­aged Nabari­ma oil tanker be­fore end of this week and the process will be com­plet­ed by month-end, For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Dr Amery Browne con­firmed this yes­ter­day.

The team to do the in­spec­tion will com­prise rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the En­er­gy Min­istry, In­sti­tute of Ma­rine Af­fairs, Mar­itime Ser­vices Di­vi­sion and T&T Coast Guard, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Franklin Khan al­so said yes­ter­day. The For­eign Af­fairs Min­istry will co-or­di­nate the vis­it.

Both min­is­ters re­spond­ed to queries on the dam­aged tanker— a float­ing stor­age unit—which is in the Gulf of Paria and is op­er­at­ed by Venezuela’s PDVSA state oil com­pa­ny and holds 1.3 mil­lion bar­rels of oil.

There has been con­cern in T&T, in­clud­ing by fish­ing groups, af­ter the tanker was re­port­ed by in­ter­na­tion­al mar­itime and oth­er me­dia to have been lean­ing and tak­ing on wa­ter in its en­gine room due to a leak. Lo­cal groups are con­cerned about a ma­jor en­vi­ron­men­tal dis­as­ter aris­ing for T&T if the tanker sinks and the oil car­go con­t­a­m­i­nates the sea.

PDVSA and Ital­ian com­pa­ny Eni, which is in a joint ven­ture with PDVSA re­gard­ing the ves­sel, stat­ed the is­sues were fixed last month and it was sta­ble. Reuters news agency last week stat­ed PDVSA and Eni are look­ing at op­tions to safe­ly of­fload crude from the ship. A Venezue­lan con­trac­tor, Con­se­mar Group, was re­cent­ly hired to do an in­spec­tion and Eni has con­sid­ered trans­fer­ring oil out of the ves­sel and ex­port­ing it to its re­fin­ing sys­tem in Italy.

Just over a week ago, af­ter in­ter­na­tion­al re­ports of the tanker’s prob­lems, the En­er­gy Min­istry said it would seek in­de­pen­dent ver­i­fi­ca­tion of the tanker’s sta­tus.

Yes­ter­day, For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Browne said the Venezue­lans have in­di­cat­ed they com­plet­ed the im­me­di­ate phase of re­pairs and oth­er phas­es are on­go­ing

Browne added, “We have been work­ing as­sid­u­ous­ly on this and (yes­ter­day) I had a vir­tu­al meet­ing with the Venezue­lan Min­is­ter of Ex­ter­nal Af­fairs on the is­sue and a phone call with the am­bas­sador in Port-of-Spain.”

Browne said the fo­cal points of the in­spec­tion vis­it have been ex­changed on both sides.