GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Se­nior Re­porter

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

The es­ti­mat­ed costs of the clean-up op­er­a­tion so far for the To­ba­go oil spill at the cen­tral Gov­ern­ment lev­el is around US$12 mil­lion but by the end of the ex­er­cise it could in­crease to as much as US$30 mil­lion, says En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young.

He made the com­ments while speak­ing at a me­dia con­fer­ence at the min­istry’s of­fices at Tow­er C at the In­ter­na­tion­al Wa­ter­front Cen­tre, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day.

Young al­so con­firmed this coun­try had suc­cess­ful­ly made a sub­mis­sion to the In­ter­na­tion­al Oil Pol­lu­tion Com­pen­sa­tion Funds (IOPC) to cov­er the cost of the clean-up of the spill, which took place off the south­west coast of To­ba­go on Feb­ru­ary 7.

Shar­ing some in­sights re­gard­ing the cost, Young ex­plained, “It is im­pos­si­ble to say at this stage what the fi­nal cost would be be­cause there re­mains un­cer­tain­ty, if the sea con­di­tions be­come rough and if the crews have to be on stand­by in­stead of work­ing for a day, you in­cur cost as a re­sult of that ... and then you have the THA (To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly), who is sub­mit­ting claims to the Min­istry of Fi­nance. So, when mak­ing sub­mis­sion to the fund, I told them you’re look­ing at some­thing I as­sume, it can ei­ther go up or go down in the re­gion of US$30 mil­lion.”

He was, how­ev­er, con­fi­dent that T&T would be prop­er­ly com­pen­sat­ed.

“All rea­son­able claims that are made will be com­pen­sat­ed by this fund ... I ex­pect the vast ma­jor­i­ty, if not all the sub­mis­sions by the cen­tral Gov­ern­ment through the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries, of the cost to the tax­pay­ers of deal­ing with this oil spill from Feb­ru­ary 7 to what­ev­er the date that it fi­nal­ly ends, we will re­ceive that com­pen­sa­tion from this fund,” Young said.

He al­so not­ed that he had led a del­e­ga­tion to the IOPC’s of­fice in Lon­don to make a case for this coun­try to ac­cess monies from the IOPC.

On claims from the clean-up made by the THA, Young said his min­istry, along with the Fi­nance Min­istry, will work with the en­ti­ty to look at them.

Re­gard­ing the own­ers of the over­turned the Gulf­stream barge that cre­at­ed the en­vi­ron­men­tal dis­as­ter, Young said ef­forts were still be­ing made to lo­cate them.

He said of­fi­cial re­quests were made to Tan­za­nia, Nige­ria, Pana­ma, Aru­ba, Cu­ra­cao and Pana­ma for as­sis­tance in trac­ing and track­ing those re­spon­si­ble and, in par­tic­u­lar, the true own­ers of the ves­sels.

“Un­for­tu­nate­ly, at this stage, de­spite all of those ef­forts, we have not been able as yet to as­cer­tain with any de­gree of cer­tain­ty who the own­ers are,” Young said.

On the as­sur­ance of some­thing like this not oc­cur­ring again, Young said there was noth­ing the Gov­ern­ment or his min­istry could do.

“What it did with this par­tic­u­lar in­ci­dent at the IOPC Funds meet­ing, and it is now go­ing to be tak­en to the In­ter­na­tion­al Mar­itime Or­gan­i­sa­tion, is that more has to be done here. The light was not cast on T&T. This ves­sel has no con­nec­tion to T&T, no one in T&T con­tract­ed it, the fu­el was not des­tined for T&T, so lit­er­al­ly, it washed up on our shores,” Young said.

He added that in­for­ma­tion from the IOPC and for­eign gov­ern­ments they had con­tact­ed sug­gest­ed that those cul­pa­ble may be part of a move­ment of rogue ves­sel own­ers who breach in­ter­na­tion­al mar­itime law.

More de­tails

On Feb­ru­ary 7, the To­ba­go Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency (TEMA) re­ceived re­ports of a cap­sized ship off the coast of Cove. It was fur­ther re­port­ed that a thick, oil-like sub­stance was wash­ing up on near­by coast­lines and spread­ing across To­ba­go’s wind­ward wa­ters.

Res­cue dives at the site lat­er found no souls on board the ves­sel and a time of when it over­turned has al­so not been as­cer­tained.

It re­mains un­clear where the ship, mea­sur­ing 100 me­tres, over­turned and whether there were any souls aboard at the time of cap­siz­ing.

The oil spill, which was de­ter­mined to be bunker fu­el fol­low­ing tests, spread over an area from Rock­ley Bay to Ca­noe Bay. Clean-up op­er­a­tions have been on­go­ing since then.