Caribbean Matters: Disastrous oil spill off coast of Tobago darkens Carnival kickoff

[Brexiter]

On Wednesday, Feb. 7, as Trinidad and Tobago’s residents and tourists alike were preparing to celebrate Carnival—a major event that takes place each year before Ash Wednesday—news broke of an oil spill off the coast of Tobago. The news raised multiple questions, due to the mysterious source of the oil-like substance: an abandoned capsized ship. The owners of the ship, named The Gulfstream, have not been identified as of this writing, though speculation swirls—including in online communities like Shipspotting and Reddit.

The spill, which is not the first Tobago has faced, has affected over 10 miles of Tobago’s coastline, and has been elevated to a national emergency by Prime Minister Keith Rowley.

For those of you unfamiliar with the nation, Encyclopedia Britannica describes Trinidad and Tobago as “the southernmost links in the Caribbean chain, northeast of Venezuela and Guyana.” At about 1850 square miles, Trinidad is the larger main island by far—Tobago measures just 115 square miles.

For context, when combined with the 20 or so smaller neighboring islands, Trinidad and Tobago is roughly the same size as Delaware.

Caribbean Matters is a weekly series from Daily Kos. If you are unfamiliar with the region, check out Caribbean Matters: Getting to know the countries of the Caribbean.

On Feb. 11, the Trinidad & Tobago Weather Center offered an in-depth preliminary report.

In a cruel repeat of history, Tobago is facing another oil spill-related environmental disaster 44 years after the fifth-largest oil spill on record occurred 18 kilometers east of the island. This latest spill, however, is still shrouded in mystery nearly five days after a thick, black oil-like substance began to wash up on Tobago’s shores. There have been no reports of injuries or fatalities as a result of the overturned ship or subsequent spill at this time.

— The ship & leak: The details of the ship and the circumstances surrounding the wreck are still not clear. After divers identified the name of the ship as Gulfstream on Thursday, attempts to further explore the wreck to ascertain the vessel’s registration number have been unsuccessful due to poor visibility and the ship’s frequent movement in shallow water. Expert divers on Saturday, according to one media report, said plugging the leak may be impossible. Samples have been sent to the Institute of Marine Affairs to fingerprint the oil-like substance, with the report expected sometime this upcoming week.

— Who and where is affected: Nearly 45 kilometers of combined coastline and near-shore marine areas, spanning from south of Belle Garden to the southern end of Crown Point. have recorded the oil-like substance from Gulfstream.

— The response so far: The Tobago House of Assembly, in conjunction with the Tobago Emergency Management Agency, have been spearheading efforts both onshore and in collaboration with T&T’s central government agencies and multiple other entities to clean affected areas through manual removal of oil-soaked sargassum peat moss, and booms that both control and absorb the oil-like substance. Divers have been investigating the ship.

The Weather Center posted video footage as well:

Footage from across Tobago's Windward Coast as a thick, black, oil-like substance affects multiple coastlines. Video: THA Read more on the #TobagoOilSpill: https://t.co/iS03Syyu2I pic.twitter.com/3GUWinSMrC

— TTWeatherCenter (@TTWeatherCenter) February 11, 2024

The Weather Center also shared satellite data on Sunday, alongside news from the Tobago Emergency Management Agency.

TEMA says the anomaly measured 48 nautical miles (approximately 88 kilometers) in length and 0.13 nautical miles (approximately 248 meters) in width. They added that the spill extends from the west to the northwest into the Caribbean Sea, with noticeable oil weathering beginning around 9.71 nautical miles (approximately 18 kilometers) from the source.

Since the westward movement of the oil-like substance began, Tobago’s coastlines have seen some relief from the thick, black material washing up on the island’s shores. TEMA indicated there are no indications of oil entering the western or northern coasts of Tobago at this time.

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The Institute of Marine Affairs (IMA) has dispatched a team to conduct initial ecological assessments of mangroves, beaches and other areas affected by the oil spill.

Prime Minister Rowley held a press conference in response to the disaster.

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Minister of Planning and Development Pennelope Beckles also spoke out about the spill.

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I’m glad to see that U.S. media and other sources outside of Trinidad and Tobago are covering the disaster. As mentioned above, oil spills are not new to the region.

Here’s a 2021 video from The Guardian:

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The video notes point out that “almost 500 oil spills have been reported in the region’s land and at sea since the beginning of 2018.”

Sarah Johnson wrote the print version.

Hands masked in thick black oil, the fisher drips toxic globules back into the sea as he pleads with the camera, urging viewers to “share this video”.

In the footage, filmed onboard a small boat, Gary Aboud documents an oil spill this week in the Gulf of Paria, off the Caribbean coast of Trinidad. It is just the latest of many spills that threaten to wreak havoc on the area’s vulnerable marine life and fishing industry.

Aboud, who heads a local environmental watchdog, showed the extent of the spill, which he said stretched for miles, and criticised what he said was a half-hearted clean-up attempt by oil company, Paria Fuel Trading Company Limited.

Fishermen and Friends of the Sea (FFOS) went out to document the spill and filmed a vessel at full throttle apparently attempting to break up the oil layer. It called for the company to use booms to contain the oil and collect it. “What we saw [in terms of the spill] was not as outrageous as what they were doing,” said Aboud.

One of the largest oil spills in history took place off the coast of T&T in 1979. The Global Atlas of Environmental Justice has details:

Atlantic Empress was a Greek oil tanker that in 1979 collided with the oil tanker Aegean Captain in the Caribbean, and eventually sank, having created the fifth largest oil spill on record and the largest ship-based spill having spilled approximately 287,000 metric tonnes of crude oil into the Caribbean Sea. It was built at the Odense Staalskibsværft shipyard in Odense, Denmark, and launched on 16 February 1974.(2) The Atlantic Empress was longer than three football stadiums lined end to end. She was valued at $45 million. When she collided with the Aegean Captain, another fully laden supertanker, on July 19, 1979, the result was a catastrophe: the worst oil tanker spill in history and a blaze that took firefighters over two weeks to extinguish. They never managed to extinguish it, the ship sank after two weeks and spilled on the oil it contained still (2). Two weeks after the collision, the Empress, still in flames, sank on August 3, the biggest commercial tanker to sink in recent years, and the largest amount of crude (275,000 tons) ever lost from a single ship. Twenty-six of the two ships members, all Greeks, were reported missing and presumed dead, and 50 others were hurried to a Tobago hospital, suffering from severe burns. (2).

As reported by CEDRE (3), "on 3 August at dawn, only an oil slick remained on the surface of water. The biggest vessel ever to have sunk had disappeared after 15 days of agony. Followed by surveillance tug boats, the oil still visible at the surface had totally disappeared by 9 August, without touching the shore. The total loss of the 280,000 tonnes of oil as a result of this collision holds the world record for an oil tanker accident. Nobody will ever know what was burned and what was dispersed by the sea. No significant shore pollution was recorded on the nearest islands. No impact study was carried out, either by the surrounding countries, or the international community, as awareness regarding marine pollution was less developed then than it is today.

It should come as no surprise that oil spills and T&T go hand in hand. Contrary to many assumptions, tourism is not the major driver of the T&T economy in the way it is for many other Caribbean nations.

Workers continue the cleanup effort near Scarborough, in southwestern Tobago.

The New York Times’ energy reporter Clifford Krauss wrote this about T&T’s economy in May:

Why Some Countries Find It Hard to Move Away From Fossil Fuels

Trinidad and Tobago is the No. 2 exporter of liquefied natural gas in the Americas. Its output has been falling, but it remains committed to fossil fuels.

Ribboned shovel in hand, Prime Minister Keith Rowley joined a ceremonial groundbreaking last month to celebrate Trinidad and Tobago’s first large solar farm project expected to generate power for 42,000 homes.

But if anyone thought the project symbolized the twilight of the island nation’s long embrace of fossil fuels, Mr. Rowley set them straight.

“We will continue to extract the hydrocarbons available to us as long as there is an international market,” Mr. Rowley said, as BP and Shell executives looked on. “If we are going to sell the last barrel of oil or the last molecule of gas, so be it.”

Trinidad and Tobago is known for its white sandy beaches, mountainous rainforests and steel pan drums. But its economy depends on oil and natural gas, not tourism.

It is one of the largest producers of fossil fuels in the Western Hemisphere, and more than a century of drilling has left its mark. The major highways on the main island are clogged by traffic and lined with industrial warehouses. Oil is stitched in the culture, a theme in many calypso songs. Even the steel pan drums originated from the lids of used oil barrels.

Environmental activists on the islands formed the Cari-Bois Environmental News Network, “a national community that brings together communities, activists, academics, scientists and journalists, to tell their own stories around the environmental impact of the extractive sector in Trinidad and Tobago, and wider irresponsible development.”

Ahead of the spill, Cari-Bois published a Feb. 7 story by environmental advocate Christianne Zakour.

Is Trinidad and Tobago striving to overcome its dependence on fossil fuels?

The oil and gas industry has certainly received condemnation for its role in environmental pollution. Between 2015 and 2018, nearly 400 oil spills were recorded by the T&T Environmental Management Authority. Oil spills are critically dangerous to humans, wildlife, and the environment. Inhalation of hydrocarbon vapours and absorption of chemical compounds can risk human health, while tourism and marine occupations like fishing may lose revenue. Wildlife health is affected by vapours, absorption of chemicals, and the risk of physical smothering. Larger ecosystem services can be overwhelmed when the habitat is unsuitable for animal health, or when a species with a key role is devastated by a spill.

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Cari-Bois spoke to local environmentalist Gary Aboud, of Fishermen and Friends of the Sea, who firmly disagrees that T&T has the capacity to phase down or phase out fossil fuels at the moment.

“That’s not an option. (Trinidad and Tobago) is a country that has mismanaged its wealth and we have a critically dangerous imbalance of trade. We’re suffering from potential devaluation, there’s poverty, there’s malnutrition; it’s not an option.”

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Phasing out of fossil fuels is, according to Aboud, an opinion of the most privileged, wealthy, well-fed nations, as less economically developed countries cannot afford to turn their back on people with a lower socioeconomic status, and extractive wealth is a critical component of the opportunity to get out, but the opportunity fails because no one manages the wealth.

T&T is clearly faced with a quandary. It’s easy to point to the adverse effects of oil exploitation; we all know the damages it causes to the sea, and how it is adding to global warming. The question then becomes one of economics.

Trinidad and Tobago, with a current population of 1,536,370 people, is often cited as one of the wealthiest nations in the Caribbean because of oil exploitation. Will that change any time soon? I doubt it.

Meanwhile, as the fight against The Gulfstream’s spill continued on Tobago, Carnival was in full swing on both islands. The only real disruption in Tobago was a re-routing of the parade route due to cleanup efforts, according to this TTT news report:

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In Trinidad, Tuesday’s Senior Parade of the Bands was streamed live.

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Elaborate Carnival costumes in Trinidad celebrated exquisite phantasmal creatures.

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One wonders how many years Carnival will continue, as the dark cloud of climate change looms large over not only Trinidad and Tobago but also the rest of the Caribbean.

Join me in the comments for the latest updates on the Tobago spill, to post your thoughts, and for the weekly Caribbean News Roundup.

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