Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

The In­ter­na­tion­al Oil Pol­lu­tion Com­pen­sa­tion (IOPC) Fund has es­ti­mat­ed the pay­out for the Gulf­stream oil spill at £4.2 mil­lion, or $38 mil­lion (TT). The fund con­firmed that com­pen­sa­tion pay­ments have be­gun, but the process is ex­pect­ed to con­tin­ue un­til 2027.

A re­port pub­lished last week ahead of the IOPC’s No­vem­ber gov­ern­ing body meet­ing in Lon­don showed that while £10 mil­lion has been raised in a spe­cial Gulf­stream Ma­jor Claims Fund, just over £1 mil­lion had been paid out as of June 30, 2025. The fund projects that an ad­di­tion­al £21.5 mil­lion will be paid be­tween Jul-09876543223456789qwser­ty­hu­jy 2025 and March 2027.

In a sep­a­rate up­date on Sep­tem­ber 12, the IOPC con­firmed that its Claims Man­ag­er, Mark Homan, vis­it­ed Trinidad and To­ba­go ear­li­er this month. He met with of­fi­cials from the Min­istry of En­er­gy and the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly and toured af­fect­ed ar­eas. Ac­cord­ing to the IOPC, dis­cus­sions fo­cused on the sale of oil re­cov­ered from the Gulf­stream barge and the dis­pos­al of waste col­lect­ed dur­ing the cleanup. The fund said the waste re­mains stored in three spe­cial­ly dug pits at the Stud­ley Park dump, and no time­line has yet been set for its fi­nal re­moval.

The Gulf­stream over­turned off Cove on Feb­ru­ary 7, 2024, spilling thou­sands of bar­rels of bunker fu­el oil that pol­lut­ed To­ba­go’s coast­line and beach­es. The tug So­lo Creed, which had been tow­ing the barge, was de­tained by An­golan au­thor­i­ties in May 2024 and lat­er for­mal­ly ar­rest­ed by a court in Oc­to­ber. How­ev­er, ac­cord­ing to IOPC records, by the time its gov­ern­ing bod­ies met in Lon­don the fol­low­ing month, the ves­sel had “es­caped ar­rest” and had not been lo­cat­ed since.

In May this year, the IOPC con­firmed that the gov­ern­ment had hired a com­pa­ny to car­ry out satel­lite sur­veil­lance in an ef­fort to track the tug. As of Au­gust 29, the ves­sel had not been de­tect­ed.

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal said the Gov­ern­ment re­mains com­mit­ted to find­ing the tug and its own­er to pur­sue To­ba­go’s mul­ti­mil­lion-dol­lar dam­age claim. “Through the mar­itime ser­vices di­vi­sion, we are col­lab­o­rat­ing to lo­cate the ves­sel us­ing rel­e­vant tech­nol­o­gy and an ex­pert agency. The own­er­ship of that ves­sel has not been con­firmed, and it is un­der ac­tive in­ves­ti­ga­tion at this time,” he told Guardian Me­dia ear­li­er this month. He added that T&T will con­tin­ue to pur­sue its $244 mil­lion claim once the ves­sel is found and its own­er iden­ti­fied.

The Gulf­stream barge it­self was re­moved from the Cove site and tak­en to Sea Lots, Trinidad, where, ac­cord­ing to the IOCP, it was bro­ken up and sold for scrap in March this year.

By April this year, the IOPC re­port­ed that 290 claims worth US$30.3 mil­lion had been sub­mit­ted. These in­clud­ed fish­eries claims from To­ba­go, claims for cleanup op­er­a­tions, and claims from Bonaire for aer­i­al sur­veil­lance and beach clean­ing. At that time, it said fur­ther claims were ex­pect­ed, in­clud­ing for tourism loss­es.

The To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly has re­port­ed spend­ing more than $72.1 mil­lion on the oil spill cleanup, al­ready ex­ceed­ing the $50 mil­lion orig­i­nal­ly al­lo­cat­ed by the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment in 2024. The IOPC, in its April 2024 in­ci­dent re­port, had ear­li­er cit­ed a high­er fig­ure of about $85 mil­lion (US$12.5 mil­lion), which re­flect­ed the THA’s ini­tial claims sub­mit­ted in the im­me­di­ate af­ter­math of the spill.

The IOPC has promised to pro­vide a full up­date on the Gulf­stream mat­ter when its gov­ern­ing bod­ies meet in Lon­don this No­vem­ber.