Not only oil spill damages needed

THE SOLO Creed has been arrested, but the pursuit of damages by the state for the Tobago oil spill is not the sole thing that needs to be the focus moving forward.

Speaking in the Senate on October 23, Minister of Finance Colm Imbert celebrated a court order issued in relation to the tugboat in Angola, boasting, “That is performance, PNM style. We tracked down that (vessel) and we arrested it!”

But to quote the former calypsonian Tambu, “The journey now start.”

The Ministry of Energy and Energy Industries is seeking to recover at least $244 million in damages.

“The government will continue to pursue all legal proceedings,” the ministry said in a statement on October 25. “We will take all steps to hold the owners and/or persons interested in the vessel accountable.”

However, that process is not straightforward, even factoring in the arrest of the tugboat.

Two vessels of murky provenance were involved in February’s environmental disaster 16 kilometres off the coast of Tobago: the Solo Creed and the Gulfstream barge, the latter of which was once reportedly used to ship asphalt and was damaged due to frequent thermal cycling.

There have been claims and counterclaims about the ownership of both.

Fraud has been raised as it relates to registration certificates.

There has been the strong suggestion that both vessels are part of the resurgent trend of a global “dark fleet,” triggered by efforts to avoid sanctions.

A strong illustration of the complications that arise comes from the government’s own separate efforts to claim compensation through international treaty bodies.

In addition to legal proceedings, the ministry continues the pursuit of recovery through the International Oil Pollution Compensation (IOPC) Fund, a matter for which Energy Minister Stuart Young flew to London, UK, in April.

But our claim before the IOPC has been fraught from day one, since it could be argued that if the vessels are uninsured, a payout could be seen as undermining the stability of the IOPC compensation regime.

While such an argument has, at least initially, not prevailed, it is unclear whether any compensation might fully cover the $244 million estimate of damage, which is just a preliminary figure according to the ministry.

These issues all suggest the state must do more than just wait on damages.

There is an urgent need to examine and improve emergency oil spill response capabilities, inclusive of training.

More worrying than the spill itself was the sense that local mechanisms simply could not cope.

To prevent recurrence, there also needs to be a bolstering of our coastal surveillance, especially given some reports which suggest the barge might have been leaking since it left Pozuelo’s Bay, Venezuela, en route to its planned destination.