Abandoned, overturned vessel spills crude off Tobago
Trinidad’s sister island, Tobago, has been hit by a massive oil spill blamed on an abandoned tanker that ran aground on the island last week, spewing thousands of gallons of thick, dirty black crude oil onto long stretches of beaches in the tourism-dependent island.
Tobagonians awoke to this stark reality last Wednesday when the 90-meter-long Gulfstream vessel with no one aboard was discovered upside-down a few hundred meters off a beach, significantly affecting economic life on the island near Grenada.
Prime Minister Keith Rowley, senior cabinet officials, and emergency response officials flew to Tobago from Trinidad on Sunday. After inspecting clean-up and recovery works, Rowley said the country may be forced to appeal for international help if the situation is not remedied in a few days.
Trinidad knows a lot about oil and gas, having been exploring and producing both for more than 100 years, but in Tobago, this is not the case.
This is why Chief Secretary Farley Augustine said over the weekend that Tobago, which rakes in millions from tourism annually, does not have the ability to deal with such a serious environmental scenario.
“Tobago was never ready for this kind of a spill,” he told reporters at the weekend. “You are talking about an island that does not have the sufficient amounts of booms, [or] adequate storage capacity for this kind of oil or for toxic material. We never prepared for this as an eventuality.”
He did add that large amounts of sargassum seaweed, which had been affecting beach life, having drifted to the Caribbean from Africa in recent years, has inadvertently helped with the clean-up efforts. “This is the one time we are grateful for sargassum, because the sargassum weed is acting as a natural absorbent of the crude oil, and so we are able to dispose of that sargassum. It will take some doing to clean up what we have here. We know this is supposed to be carnival weekend, but we will be working through the weekend and doing what is necessary to ensure that the clean-up happens.”
Officials have stopped short of declaring a tier-three emergency, which would have allowed the national government to free up millions of funds for the recovery efforts.
Rowley hinted at summoning international help, noting that “we will have to move relatively quickly to determine what we do next, which is to bring the vessel to a position where it does not pose a threat at the national level. We may require help because once we start talking about salvaging, which is to get the vessel in a situation where we can control what goes on, we have to have outside help. We are doing all that is possible to answer these questions from mobilizing the contingency plan. Everything that needs to be done has been, to this point, done and is being done and will be done to ameliorate and minimize and eventually eliminate the threat.”
Rowley said authorities are at a loss to determine who owns the vessel, where it came from, and where it was headed.
“This is a national emergency and therefore it will have to be funded as an extraordinary expense. You have to find the money and prioritize, so this is a priority and we have to respond. The central government will have to provide whatever support the Tobago House of Assembly needs. What should be clear to you is that some not so insignificant costs are being incurred just to respond to this incident that we didn’t plan for and that we didn’t expect. But it has happened and we are required to deal with it.”
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