KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries Stu­art Young says there are over 350 ves­sels named Gulf­stream, which makes it dif­fi­cult for state agen­cies to find the own­er of the cap­sized ship leak­ing oil off the To­ba­go coast.

Ad­dress­ing the oil spill in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives on Fri­day evening, Young said ex­pert divers swam to the ship’s hull sev­er­al times to gath­er fur­ther in­for­ma­tion. How­ev­er, sea cur­rent, low vis­i­bil­i­ty, and ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty im­ped­ed their ef­forts.

Re­spond­ing to Op­po­si­tion MP Rudranath In­dars­ingh, Young said the Mar­itime Di­vi­sion, Coast Guard and oth­er in­tel­li­gence agen­cies, in­clud­ing CARI­COM IM­PACS, have been as­sist­ing in trac­ing and track­ing the iden­ti­ty of the ves­sel’s own­er, if that in­for­ma­tion ex­ists. He said they are all aware that there are oc­ca­sions in in­ter­na­tion­al trade when less than le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties oc­cur at sea.

“The first thing we need to un­der­stand is that this ves­sel prob­a­bly over­turned some­where in in­ter­na­tion­al wa­ters. There was ab­solute­ly no de­bris found any­where near where the ves­sel even­tu­al­ly end­ed up, which is up­side down on a reef, un­for­tu­nate­ly in To­ba­go wa­ters,” Young said.

Young said Gov­ern­ment has been able to as­cer­tain that the ves­sel con­tained fu­el, and lab­o­ra­to­ries said it was like­ly to be Bunker C fu­el, which is not crude oil. He said this fu­el was on its way to Guyana. It seemed to have stopped off in Aru­ba, a pos­si­ble fu­el source, and the satel­lite im­agery showed up that the ves­sel was on tow. 

He said Gov­ern­ment took ac­tion im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter learn­ing about the oil spill on Feb­ru­ary 7,  the same day the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly learned of it the same day from fish­er­men.

Ear­li­er on, In­dars­ingh not­ed Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said the main task was to emp­ty the ves­sel in a con­trol op­er­a­tion. Row­ley said Gov­ern­ment was as­sess­ing the scope and seek­ing ex­per­tise where nec­es­sary.

“Ten days lat­er, you are still analysing the scope and what is re­quired. Lift the dis­as­ter tier to lev­el three and get the nec­es­sary ex­per­tise and com­pe­ten­cies to deal with the is­sue be­cause the oil con­tin­ues to im­pact the coast­line,” In­dars­ingh said.