Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Gov­ern­ment be­lieves that the cap­sized barge leak­ing oil off To­ba­go could have been trig­gered by a tow­ing op­er­a­tion “gone bad”—and the state is de­ter­mined­ly seek­ing those re­spon­si­ble to hold them li­able and com­pen­sate T&T but is yet to iden­ti­fy them.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley in­di­cat­ed this in a state­ment to Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day on the oil spill, which has been dam­ag­ing To­ba­go’s coast­lines since Feb­ru­ary 7.

He al­so said T&T is han­dling the sit­u­a­tion ac­cord­ing to plan and is at Tier Two emer­gency lev­el, “... But may re­quire a bit of out­side help, how­ev­er, we have not yet de­clared a Tier Three emer­gency, but that may be forth­com­ing.”

Tier Three means that in­ter­na­tion­al aid will be for­mal­ly re­quest­ed. Row­ley said the ves­sel is, as of now, still stuck on the reef off Ca­noe Bay, To­ba­go.

“It con­tin­ues to pose a ma­jor threat, as it con­tin­ues foul­ing the coast­line and sur­round­ing seas. Our ma­jor task now is to emp­ty the con­tents of the ves­sel in a con­trolled op­er­a­tion and neu­tralise the threat. We are as­sess­ing the scope of what is re­quired and are seek­ing the per­ti­nent ex­per­tise where we do not have it,” he said.

He said at this stage, it’s be­lieved the whole sit­u­a­tion was trig­gered by a tow­ing op­er­a­tion gone bad. But Gov­ern­ment has not yet de­ter­mined the na­ture of the op­er­a­tion, which re­sult­ed in the wreck­age of the Gulf Stream drift­ing to T&T’s shores.

He said the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry—par­tic­u­lar­ly the T&T Coast Guard—im­me­di­ate­ly reached out to oth­er lo­cal and re­gion­al agen­cies, in­clud­ing the Mar­itime Ser­vices Di­vi­sion, IR Con­sil­i­um (through an ex­pert con­sul­tant), Cari­com IM­PACS, and the Guyana Coast Guard, in an ur­gent ef­fort to iden­ti­fy the ves­sels and their own­ers.

“As new in­for­ma­tion comes to hand, we may need to talk to oth­er ju­ris­dic­tions, in­clud­ing Venezuela. At the mo­ment, we have of­fers of help from ma­jor oil-han­dling na­tions, Brazil and Venezuela. The Min­istry of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs is in con­tact through the es­tab­lished pro­to­cols and will con­tin­ue to ad­vance these dis­cus­sions.”

In as­sist­ing with in­ves­ti­ga­tions, the Cari­com Im­ple­men­ta­tion Agency for Crime and Se­cu­ri­ty (IM­PACS) con­tact­ed the au­thor­i­ties in Pana­ma and Aru­ba for pho­tographs of the tug­boat So­lo Creed and the Gulf­stream. He said in re­sponse, the Dutch au­thor­i­ties in Aru­ba pro­vid­ed im­ages of both ves­sels, which can help in con­firm­ing the iden­ti­ty of one of the ves­sels. The na­ture and le­gal­i­ty of their op­er­a­tions are still to be un­rav­elled.

“While we have made good progress and have iden­ti­fied many leads which are be­ing fol­lowed up in the on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions, there is, as yet, no de­fin­i­tive iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of op­er­a­tors or own­er­ship and con­fir­ma­tion of the of­fend­ing par­ty/par­ties.

“What is a fact is that, notwith­stand­ing who is re­spon­si­ble, we have to pro­tect, pre­serve and re­store the en­vi­ron­ment. We will al­so re­lent­less­ly seek to find out who is re­spon­si­ble and hold them li­able for all that they are re­quired to in­dem­ni­fy us for,” Row­ley added, not­ing the sit­u­a­tion was not bud­get­ed for in the an­nu­al al­lo­ca­tion and the cost of deal­ing with it must be as­sumed by the Fi­nance Min­istry as an “ex­tra­or­di­nary in­escapable ex­pense.”

“We un­der­take at the lev­el of the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment to do all that is nec­es­sary to deal with this threat, which came to us from out­side our own ac­tiv­i­ties, and to hold re­spon­si­ble all who pol­lut­ed our en­vi­ron­ment.”

He not­ed that T&T, as a mar­itime na­tion sur­round­ed by wa­ter­ways open to a wide range of in­ter­na­tion­al mar­itime traf­fic, is al­ways ex­posed to cer­tain risks like oil spills.

Cit­ing “a lot of un­in­formed com­men­tary about clo­sure of bor­ders and the use of per­mits for pas­sage through T&T’s ma­rine space, Row­ley added, “Un­like our air space, there is no in­ter­na­tion­al law which re­quires non-mil­i­tary ves­sels from ex­er­cis­ing the right of in­no­cent pas­sage through our wa­ters. This be­ing so, we’ve al­ways had to an­tic­i­pate un­wel­come events like these and it is for this pur­pose that the Na­tion­al Oil Spill Con­tin­gency plan is in place, cur­rent­ly ac­ti­vat­ed to Tier 2 ...”

UNC MP Rudy In­dars­ingh asked if Gov­ern­ment had con­sid­ered and li­aised with the THA Chief Sec­re­tary on rais­ing the dis­as­ter lev­el to Tier Three. Row­ley said his state­ment made it clear the op­er­a­tion is col­lab­o­ra­tive.