Half-million barrels unloaded from oil-storage vessel in the Gulf

ABOUT half of the 1.3 million barrels of crude oil stored in the troubled Nabarima floating storage and offloading (FSO) facility, moored off Guiria, Sucre, Venezuela, have been transferred to an oil tanker, a Reuters report said on Thursday.

After the alarm was first raised last October about the listing ship posing the risk of an oil spill in the Gulf of Paria, the US State Department said an intervention would not violate US sanctions against Venezuela.The sanctions are aimed at ousting President Nicolas Maduro over alleged election-rigging. The Nabarima has been idle for two years as a result.

Italian oil company Eni, which has a 26 per cent stake in the Petrosucre joint venture with PDVSA (Venezuela's state-owned oil company) prepared to help. PDVSA also prepared its own offload using a sanctioned oil-tanker, the Icaro.

On December 15, the Reuters news agency said PDVSA had begun to transfer oil from the offshore facility.

On Wednesday, Reuters reported in a story headlined: Venezuela completes first tranche of oil transfer from offshore facility:

“PDVSA in December began offloading crude from the Nabarima floating storage and offloading facility (FSO), after images of the facility listing earlier last year raised alarms among workers, activists and governments of neighbouring countries about a possible environmental disaster.”

Reuters said satellite images showed 570,000 barrels were moved from the Nabarima to the Icaro, a PDVSA-owned vessel anchored nearby, according to TankerTrackers.com, a service that monitors satellite data for the oil industry. A barge, the Inmaculada, was used to ferry the Nabarima's crude to the Icaro.

“Another person with direct knowledge of the matter said the Icaro finished loading 567,000 barrels of crude on January 17. Vessel tracking data on Refinitiv Eikon show the vessel is now full.”

Environmental activist Gary Aboud, secretary of the NGO Fishermen and Friends of the Sea, told Newsday originally his footage last year had shown the vessel tilting at 27 degrees.

He complained that the Venezuelan Government had initially denied the Nabarima was listing, while later the video footage had not shown the hull so as to identify the FSO as being the Nabarima.

Asked if he was planning to go back out in a boat to check on the Nabarima, Aboud said, “It’s too dangerous for us. They have dispatched military personnel there and they are fully armed.”

Newsday was unable to contact Energy Minister Franklin Khan for comment.