The re­moval of the re­main­ing oil from the barge off of The Cove in To­ba­go is ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed by the end of next month, and the Gov­ern­ment is pur­su­ing re­ports of the ar­rest in An­go­la of the “So­lo Creed” tug which had been tow­ing the barge.

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young gave the lat­est in­for­ma­tion on the barge and tug in­volved in the oil spill that hit To­ba­go in Feb­ru­ary. The leak­ing oil fouled miles of To­ba­go’s coast­line.

Young spoke in the Sen­ate fol­low­ing queries by In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Dr Paul Richards, who re­quest­ed a com­pre­hen­sive up­date on the search for the own­er(s) of the ves­sel and the own­er(s) and ori­gin of the ves­sel that was re­port­ed­ly tow­ing the barge.

Young said the barge, strong­ly sus­pect­ed to be the “Gulf­stream”, was classed with the Amer­i­can Bu­reau of Ship­ping (ABS) un­til De­cem­ber 31, 2018, but af­ter that, no fur­ther reg­is­tra­tion de­tails were avail­able. It was not­ed that it ap­peared the ves­sel had not been re­classed or reg­is­tered for sev­er­al years.

Re­gard­ing the tug, Young said T&T’s Coast Guard has been work­ing in close col­lab­o­ra­tion with Guyana’s Coast Guard and Cari­com’s Im­ple­men­ta­tion Agency for Crime and Se­cu­ri­ty (IM­PACS) to as­sist in iden­ti­fy­ing the tug’s own­er.

The di­rec­tor of the Mar­itime Ser­vices Di­vi­sion (MSD) has been reach­ing out to var­i­ous sim­i­lar di­vi­sions in Cari­com, Pana­ma, and Africa, as well as IR Con­sil­i­um, to iden­ti­fy the ves­sel(s) and any own­ers.

He said of­fi­cial cor­re­spon­dence was dis­patched to Pana­ma and Tan­za­nia, seek­ing rel­e­vant in­for­ma­tion re­gard­ing the two ves­sels. The MSD was al­so con­tact­ed by a Niger­ian lawyer rep­re­sent­ing the pur­port­ed own­er of the ves­sels. “MSD is cur­rent­ly scru­ti­n­is­ing the va­lid­i­ty of the claims, hav­ing ini­ti­at­ed in­quiries with the Niger­ian Gov­ern­ment. How­ev­er, at this time, there’s rea­son­able sus­pi­cion re­lat­ed to this par­tic­u­lar claim and cor­re­spon­dence,” Young added.

De­spite great ef­forts and all search­es fail­ing to lo­cate the tug, Young said re­cent­ly there were re­ports of the “So­lo Creed” be­ing ar­rest­ed in An­go­la.

“Im­me­di­ate­ly, Gov­ern­ment dis­patched of­fi­cial cor­re­spon­dence to the Gov­ern­ment of An­go­la to ob­tain in­for­ma­tion to con­firm whether the tug has in fact been de­tained. This line of in­quiry is be­ing pur­sued,” he added.

“At a re­cent meet­ing at the In­ter­na­tion­al Oil and Pol­lu­tion Com­pen­sa­tion (IOPC) Fund in Lon­don, when T&T made sub­mis­sions to this body, it be­came ap­par­ent that un­for­tu­nate­ly there is a glob­al net­work of rogue ves­sels at­tempt­ing to op­er­ate un­der the law and in­ter­na­tion­al oblig­a­tions sim­i­lar to how both ves­sels and their own­er(s) op­er­at­ed, where it’s very dif­fi­cult to as­cer­tain those legal­ly re­spon­si­ble for the ves­sels.

“Once own­er­ship’s es­tab­lished, Gov­ern­ment will take le­gal ac­tion against the pur­port­ed own­ers. We’ll con­tin­ue us­ing our re­la­tion­ships and re­sources, in­clud­ing an in­de­pen­dent satel­lite provider, to as­cer­tain the own­er(s). The In­ter­na­tion­al Ma­rine Or­gan­i­sa­tion is al­so iden­ti­fy­ing a con­sul­tant to as­sist,” Young said.

Some laws can min­imise the re­cur­rence of such an in­ci­dent, he added.

“In the in­ter­na­tion­al mar­itime in­dus­try and al­so in do­mes­tic ports, there are oblig­a­tions. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, this wouldn’t have helped us in T&T in pre­vent­ing the ves­sel from en­ter­ing the way it did. How­ev­er, we’ve raised those ques­tions at the IPOC very re­cent­ly, and there’s an oblig­a­tion, for ex­am­ple, in Pana­ma, where the ves­sel last left, to have prop­er records, in­clud­ing con­fir­ma­tion of in­sur­ance and own­er­ship.

“How the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty should be deal­ing with it is that each do­mes­tic port must do its best to en­sure prop­er records are kept of every ves­sel en­ter­ing/leav­ing. It seems in this in­ci­dent there was a lapse in that record keep­ing.”

11,000 more bar­rels to be re­moved

Young said in­ter­na­tion­al op­er­a­tors re­tained by the Gov­ern­ment to re­move the oil from the barge are cur­rent­ly look­ing at a fur­ther es­ti­mat­ed 11,000 bar­rels. “The process has been some­what de­layed as this is on the At­lantic side with an over­turned ves­sel on a reef—every time there’s rough wa­ters or bad weath­er, they have to cease for safe­ty rea­sons. It’s ex­pect­ed that the de­cant­i­ng of the fu­el re­main­ing will be com­plet­ed by the end of Ju­ly,” Young added.

He said the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty and the In­sti­tute of Ma­rine Af­fairs are as­cer­tain­ing the lev­el of en­vi­ron­men­tal dam­age.

“We’ve al­so brought in oth­er in­ter­na­tion­al ex­perts as well as some lo­cal ex­perts. They’ve been do­ing the nec­es­sary eval­u­a­tions of the ef­fects on the en­vi­ron­ment, which so far for­tu­nate­ly haven’t been as dis­as­trous as it could have been.”

Young said a process akin to fin­ger­print­ing has been done to de­ter­mine the fu­el’s “DNA” and this will be sent to all re­gion­al re­finer­ies for iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of its ori­gin.