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Sunday, July 6, 2025

Expert finds different name for mystery barge

by

Kalain Hosein
502 days ago
20240220

The mys­tery of the over­turned barge near Cove, To­ba­go, and its miss­ing-in-ac­tion tug has thick­ened. Near­ly two weeks af­ter oil first washed up on To­ba­go’s shores, one mar­itime law ex­pert is chal­leng­ing the name of the cap­sized barge that was vi­su­al­ly iden­ti­fied as “Gulf­stream” by divers.

At­tor­ney-at-law Nyree Al­fon­so, who has been a civ­il lit­i­ga­tor spe­cial­is­ing in ma­rine in­sur­ance and mar­itime law for over 30 years, says based on her in­ves­ti­ga­tion, “the name that is com­ing up is ‘Coolie Boy’, a fair­ly com­mon term in Guyana and Trinidad and To­ba­go as well.”

Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty said last week that the Trinidad and To­ba­go Coast Guard had ac­quired in­for­ma­tion that showed both the barge and tug were head­ing to Guyana, with the tug pass­ing through Pana­ma in tran­sit.

In re­sponse to the re­lease, Guyana’s vice pres­i­dent, Dr Bhar­rat Jagdeo, said his coun­try should not be held ac­count­able for To­ba­go’s oil spill dis­as­ter, as it was caused by a ves­sel en route to Guyana.

Al­fon­so agreed yes­ter­day, stat­ing that while a Guyanese en­ti­ty may have owned the barge, that did not mean Guyana would be the par­ty re­spon­si­ble for the To­ba­go oil spill.

She ex­plained, “The barge can­not move on its own. The barge is like a wheel­bar­row. The per­son push­ing a wheel­bar­row will ei­ther knock you down or go around to you, as the case may be. And a wheel­bar­row can­not, on its own, make a ma­noeu­vre to stop, go for­ward, or go back­ward. In most ac­ci­dents in­volv­ing tugs and barges, li­a­bil­i­ty falls on the tow­ing tug be­cause that is where the ma­noeu­vra­bil­i­ty of the tow is con­trolled, from the wheel­house of the tug.”

Al­fon­so said this is why find­ing the tug, So­lo Creed, was cru­cial be­cause the en­ti­ty that owns the tug, not the barge, will like­ly be re­spon­si­ble for com­pen­sat­ing T&T for the en­vi­ron­men­tal dis­as­ter.

“The oth­er tragedy of this un­for­tu­nate event is that Trinidad and To­ba­go are not sig­na­to­ries to the in­ter­na­tion­al con­ven­tion that deals with pol­lu­tion in the seas,” Al­fon­so said.

She ex­plained that T&T signed on­to the In­ter­na­tion­al Con­ven­tion Re­lat­ing to Civ­il Li­a­bil­i­ty for Oil Pol­lu­tion Dam­age 1992 and the In­ter­na­tion­al Con­ven­tion on the Es­tab­lish­ment of an In­ter­na­tion­al Fund for Com­pen­sa­tion for Oil Pol­lu­tion Dam­age 1992 but they were not sub­se­quent­ly in­cor­po­rat­ed in­to lo­cal law.

She said, “If you’re a sig­na­to­ry to the oil pol­lu­tion con­ven­tion, then a fund would be cre­at­ed by the of­fend­ing ves­sel, the own­ers of the of­fend­ing ves­sel, or the P&I club of the of­fend­ing ves­sel, and that would be avail­able to make good the loss­es sus­tained.”

Guardian Me­dia has sent ques­tions to the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port to con­firm Al­fon­so’s re­search but did not re­ceive a re­sponse up to press time.

Grena­da still mon­i­tor­ing spill

What is now known as pos­si­ble fu­el oil or ma­rine diesel con­tin­u­ing to spill off the coast of To­ba­go, trav­el­ling in­to the Caribbean Sea and through Grena­da’s ter­ri­to­r­i­al wa­ters, is be­ing close­ly mon­i­tored by the is­land known for its spices and pris­tine beach­es.

Grena­da’s Na­tion­al Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Agency (NaD­MA) con­firmed yes­ter­day that “there are no re­ports of the spilled oil reach­ing close to the shores of Grena­da, but NaD­MA will re­main vig­i­lant as the move­ment of the oil is de­pen­dent on weath­er and sea con­di­tions.”

Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Min­istry of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs sent a state­ment to the gov­ern­ment of Grena­da on Feb­ru­ary 17th de­tail­ing the lat­est on the oil spill.

Grena­da’s gov­ern­ment was in­formed that “pre­lim­i­nary lab­o­ra­to­ry test­ing by the In­sti­tute of Ma­rine Af­fairs (IMA) of Trinidad and To­ba­go, in­di­cate that the sam­ples are char­ac­ter­is­tic of a re­fined oil, pos­si­bly a fu­el oil or ma­rine diesel. Ad­di­tion­al sam­ples are be­ing col­lect­ed for fur­ther analy­ses.”

How­ev­er, the state­ment added, “The es­ti­mat­ed quan­ti­ty of oil on­board the over­turned ves­sel has not yet been con­firmed.”

T&T in­formed Grena­da that the coun­try has “en­gaged re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al en­ti­ties with the clean-up ef­forts” and T&T is “will­ing to pro­vide re­sources, where pos­si­ble, to Grena­da to as­sist with clean-up ef­forts if it be­comes nec­es­sary.”

The Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment in T&T has al­so con­firmed to NaD­MA that while the over­turned ves­sel off Cove, To­ba­go, con­tin­ues to leak oil, “the cur­rent quan­ti­ties are less.”

With­in Grena­da, the Oil Spill Com­mit­tee, a sub-com­mit­tee of the Na­tion­al Emer­gency Ad­vi­so­ry Coun­cil of NaD­MA, con­tin­ued col­lab­o­rat­ing with re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners to mon­i­tor the sit­u­a­tion.

In an­oth­er state­ment, NaD­MA said, “The com­mit­tee recog­nis­es that an im­pact of the oil spill on the shores of Grena­da will re­quire sig­nif­i­cant re­sponse re­sources. There­fore, all lo­cal re­sources have been placed on stand­by, and re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners have been alert­ed of the need for ad­di­tion­al re­sources if nec­es­sary.”

The lat­est satel­lite im­ages analysed by NaD­MA re­vealed that the oil has con­tin­ued to move west of To­ba­go, then in a north­west di­rec­tion to­ward Grena­da’s mar­itime ter­ri­to­ry, then west­ward through Venezuela’s mar­itime area.

NaD­MA said the lat­est satel­lite im­age sug­gests the clos­est point the oil was lo­cat­ed at was more than 30 nau­ti­cal miles south-south­west of Point Salines, Grena­da.

TEMA con­tin­ues

clean-up ef­forts

New Tiger Tank Frac tanks ar­rived in To­ba­go on Sun­day to tem­porar­i­ly store the oil cap­tured from To­ba­go’s wa­ters through skim­mers. These frac tanks have been used over the last week in To­ba­go and are housed at Cove Eco-In­dus­tri­al Busi­ness Park.

The To­ba­go Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency (TEMA) has been us­ing pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary booms to con­trol the oil spilling out of the over­turned barge near Cove, To­ba­go, and skim­mers to cap­ture the oil.

TEMA has al­so ad­vised that there are sev­er­al road clo­sures to fa­cil­i­tate oil clean-up. These ar­eas in­clude the cor­ner of Ceme­tery Street and Mil­ford Road, the cor­ner of the Lam­beau Vil­lage Street and Mil­ford Road, and Ham­p­den Lam­beau Road from the Lam­beau Fish Mar­ket to the Mag­dale­na Ho­tel back en­trance.


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