Venezuela's op­po­si­tion-con­trolled Na­tion­al As­sem­bly claims pres­sure from this coun­try was part of the rea­son why state-owned Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) moved to sta­bilise the FSO Nabari­ma, the stor­age tanker that has been at risk of spilling 1.3 mil­lion bar­rels of crude oil in­to the Gulf of Paria.

The is­sue was dis­cussed at a vir­tu­al ses­sion of the Na­tion­al As­sem­bly on Tues­day and a joint state­ment was is­sued call­ing on the Ital­ian oil com­pa­ny ENI, co-own­ers of the ves­sel with PDVSA, to trans­fer the crude stored in the oil tanker.

Na­tion­al As­sem­bly deputies blamed Nicolás Maduro regime for the state of the Venezue­lan oil in­dus­try and the mul­ti­ple as­sets and fields PDVSA,

ENI sus­pend­ed its work with PDVSA due to Unit­ed States sanc­tions but was re­cent­ly giv­en the go-ahead to trans­fer the crude oil from the Nabari­ma.

The Na­tion­al As­sem­bly urged the Ital­ian com­pa­ny to at­tend to "the ur­gent rec­om­men­da­tions of ex­perts for the im­me­di­ate trans­fer of the load and se­cu­ri­ty of the fa­cil­i­ties." They will al­so ask the Unit­ed Na­tions Of­fice for Project Ser­vice and the In­ter­na­tion­al Mar­itime Or­ga­ni­za­tion to do an ur­gent in­spec­tion of the ves­sel,

Deputy To­bías Bolí­var said the lack of main­te­nance had left the tanker in a de­plorable con­di­tion.

“Out of 80 work­ers, on­ly six re­main. The worst can hap­pen at any mo­ment— a large-scale spill. This would cause poi­son­ing of the Venezue­lan coasts," he warned

María Gabriela Hernán­dez, pres­i­dent of the En­vi­ron­ment Com­mis­sion, said: "All of Venezuela is wait­ing for the Ital­ian com­pa­ny ENI to suc­cess­ful­ly car­ry out the en­tire car­go ma­noeu­vre and free us from en­vi­ron­men­tal risk."

Last month a three-mem­ber in­spec­tion team from T&T toured the ves­sel fol­low­ing lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al con­cerns about a po­ten­tial en­vi­ron­men­tal threat af­ter it be­gan list­ing to the right and tak­ing on wa­ter in Au­gust. Gov­ern­ment had pressed for an in­de­pen­dent ver­i­fi­ca­tion vis­it and af­ter some de­lay on Venezuela’s part, fi­nal­ly ob­tained ap­proval to in­spect the Nabari­ma.

Af­ter the sev­en-hour tour, the team re­port­ed that the tanker was up­right, sta­ble and in no dan­ger of tilt­ing or sink­ing.