Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

Se­nior Re­porter

eliz­a­beth.gon­za­les@guardian.co.tt

Two years af­ter Gulf­stream cap­sized off the coast of To­ba­go, caus­ing an oil spill af­fect­ing Scar­bor­ough and the South­ern Caribbean, Trinidad and To­ba­go has on­ly man­aged to re­cov­er just over $61 mil­lion from its clean-up op­er­a­tions from the In­ter­na­tion­al Oil Pol­lu­tion Com­pen­sa­tion Funds (IOPC Funds).

The IOPC had a com­pen­sa­tion of­fer to T&T of $86.3 mil­lion.

The clean-up op­er­a­tions were han­dled by the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries and Her­itage and to­talled $311.7 mil­lion ac­cord­ing to claims sub­mit­ted to the IOPC.

Ac­cord­ing to doc­u­ments ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia In­ves­ti­ga­tions Desk, the MEEI has on­ly been re­im­bursed $51.6 mil­lion from $138.9 mil­lion in claims sub­mit­ted and re­viewed, while Her­itage has on­ly been re­im­bursed $10 mil­lion from $50 mil­lion in claims sub­mit­ted.

The doc­u­ments showed that the IOPC re­viewed $189.3 mil­lion in claims, queried $84 mil­lion, re­ject­ed $15 mil­lion and even­tu­al­ly paid $61 mil­lion as of March 2026.

If T&T wants to ac­cess more mon­ey from the IOPC, it has un­til Feb­ru­ary 2027 to make fur­ther claims.

Un­der the IOPC’s rules, claimants ul­ti­mate­ly lose their right to com­pen­sa­tion un­der the 1992 Fund Con­ven­tion af­ter a three-year pe­ri­od.

The lat­est IOPC re­port on the Gulf­stream oil spill, dat­ed March 10, 2026, said 306 claims had been as­sessed and $60,567,688 had been paid.

Those claims cov­ered clean-up op­er­a­tions in To­ba­go and fish­eries where oil from the spill al­so washed ashore.

It al­so cov­ered op­er­a­tions sur­round­ing the sal­vaging of the ves­sel and the re­main­ing bunker fu­el.

T&T has ac­cess to the IOPC’s 1992 Fund, which al­lows coun­tries af­fect­ed by spills to seek com­pen­sa­tion for el­i­gi­ble clean-up and re­cov­ery costs.

But claims are not paid au­to­mat­i­cal­ly. They must be sup­port­ed by in­voic­es, ac­count­ing records and oth­er ev­i­dence show­ing the mon­ey was ac­tu­al­ly spent and that the loss can be quan­ti­fied.

In May 2024, the IOPC doc­u­ment had said: “Ini­tial es­ti­mates of the cost of the re­sponse to the oil spill, in­clu­sive of oil re­moval from the wreck so far, is in the re­gion of USD 23.5 mil­lion (TTD 160 mil­lion). So far, it is es­ti­mat­ed that USD12.5 mil­lion (TTD 85 mil­lion) has been spent as of 6 April 2024. Fur­ther costs and claims for eco­nom­ic loss­es are ex­pect­ed. Bulk clean-up op­er­a­tions were com­plet­ed in March 2024 and the shore­line clean-up is ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed in April 2024. The oil re­moval from the wreck is al­so ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed by mid-May 2024.”

IOPC: lo­cal laws need­ed

In a May 11 IOPC doc­u­ment, T&T’s del­e­ga­tion ac­knowl­edged that the coun­try was par­ty to the in­ter­na­tion­al oil-spill com­pen­sa­tion con­ven­tions, but had not yet passed the lo­cal laws need­ed to bring those rules ful­ly in­to lo­cal law at the time of the Gulf­stream oil spill.

That did not stop T&T from mak­ing claims and get­ting ac­cess to the IOPC Funds fol­low­ing lob­by­ing by for­mer min­is­ter of en­er­gy Stu­art Young in 2024 dur­ing his tenure. Ac­cord­ing to the doc­u­ment, T&T told the IOPC that it faces chal­lenges ded­i­cat­ing mon­ey to the claims process and to the con­tin­ued in­ves­ti­ga­tion of the So­lo Creed and its own­ers through the Mar­itime Ser­vices Di­vi­sion and the Cari­com Im­ple­men­ta­tion Agency for Crime and Se­cu­ri­ty (Cari­com IM­PACS).

In an ex­clu­sive in­ves­ti­ga­tion by Guardian Me­dia and Belling­cat in March 2024, the reg­is­tered own­er of the So­lo Creed was iden­ti­fied as Melis­sa Rona Gon­za­lez, an of­fi­cer of Melaj Off­shore Cor­po­ra­tion, whose prin­ci­pal own­er is Au­gus­tine Jack­son. Jack­son has a his­to­ry of in­volve­ment in oil deals in Venezuela and Guyana. But when con­tact­ed, Jack­son claimed that the So­lo Creed and the Gulf­stream barge had been sold to Abra­ham Olalekan of Nige­ria.

The IOPC Sec­re­tari­at said it had been en­gag­ing with the State At­tor­ney’s Of­fice in T&T on the prop­er im­ple­men­ta­tion of the con­ven­tions in­to do­mes­tic law.

The Gulf­stream barge cap­sized and sank off To­ba­go in ear­ly Feb­ru­ary 2024 while be­ing towed by the tug So­lo Creed.

Ac­cord­ing to the IOPC re­port, the barge be­gan spilling oil about 16 km off To­ba­go be­fore com­ing to rest be­tween 150 and 200m off Ca­noe Bay. It said the ves­sel was be­lieved to have been trav­el­ling from Pozue­los Bay, Venezuela, to Guyana. No emer­gency calls were trans­mit­ted by the tug.

The IOPC re­port said rem­nants of the oil slick trav­elled about 830 km across the Caribbean Sea.

On Feb­ru­ary 26, 2024, traces of oil and tar balls washed up on the east coast of Bonaire. T&T Sal­vage LLC and QT En­vi­ron­men­tal Inc were re­tained to re­move oil from the wreck and re­move the ves­sel.

By Au­gust 2024, 32,675 bar­rels of oil had been re­cov­ered from the Gulf­stream.

The barge was re­float­ed on Au­gust 19, 2024, and towed to Trinidad, ar­riv­ing on Au­gust 22, 2024. The oil was lat­er ad­ver­tised for sale by auc­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to the doc­u­ment, be­cause the ori­gin of the oil could not be de­ter­mined, on­ly one in­ter­na­tion­al buy­er was will­ing to pur­chase it in late 2025 for about US$986,000. The IOPC re­port said the mon­ey will be used to de­fray costs in­curred by the coun­try and re­duce its claims against the 1992 Fund.

The re­port al­so states that the main re­sponse is­sue still to be re­solved was the man­age­ment of oily waste col­lect­ed and stored in To­ba­go.

So­lo Creed can’t be found

While the claims process con­tin­ues, the tug linked to the dis­as­ter re­mains un­trace­able, and Gov­ern­ment is un­cer­tain how much it is pre­pared to spend be­fore it of­fi­cial­ly ends the hunt.

In writ­ten re­spons­es to Guardian Me­dia In­ves­ti­ga­tions Desk, the Min­istry of En­er­gy said the Mar­itime Ser­vices Di­vi­sion is re­spon­si­ble for spear­head­ing the in­ves­ti­ga­tion of the tug and barge and co­or­di­nat­ing with Cari­com IM­PACS, the T&T Coast Guard and oth­er mar­itime agen­cies to lo­cate, ar­rest and iden­ti­fy the own­ers of the So­lo Creed.

The min­istry said the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al is re­spon­si­ble for le­gal pro­ceed­ings against the tug and its own­ers once lo­cat­ed.

How­ev­er, the min­istry said the Mar­itime Ser­vices Di­vi­sion had not in­curred any di­rect ex­pen­di­ture in re­la­tion to the search for the So­lo Creed.

Satel­lite sur­veil­lance ser­vices were en­gaged at the re­quest of the di­vi­sion, but the min­istry said the as­so­ci­at­ed cost was borne by the Pi­lots’ As­so­ci­a­tion.

The ser­vice was pro­cured be­fore April 2025 at a one-time fee of ap­prox­i­mate­ly €5,000.

The ser­vice cov­ered ap­prox­i­mate­ly 300,000 square km and fo­cused on de­tect­ing the ves­sel’s ra­dio fre­quen­cy sig­na­ture.

“To date, these ef­forts have not yield­ed any con­firmed lo­ca­tion of the ves­sel,” the min­istry said.

The IOPC re­port said the So­lo Creed was ar­rest­ed in An­go­la in ear­ly May 2024 for breach­ing the bound­aries of sev­er­al oil-field ex­clu­sion zones.

This coun­try in­struct­ed lawyers to ini­ti­ate ar­rest pro­ceed­ings against the own­ers of the So­lo Creed and/or its crew. An ar­rest ap­pli­ca­tion was grant­ed in Lu­an­da and the tug was placed un­der ar­rest with guards on board.

How­ev­er, be­fore the No­vem­ber 2024 ses­sions of the IOPC Funds’ gov­ern­ing bod­ies, T&T was no­ti­fied that the tug had es­caped ar­rest and to date re­mains miss­ing. It said ef­forts con­tin­ued through diplo­mat­ic mea­sures and by trac­ing crew mem­bers who were on board the tug at the time of ar­rest.

Asked whether Gov­ern­ment was get­ting to the point where it may have to count its loss­es, the min­istry said no for­mal de­ci­sion had been made. It added Gov­ern­ment was still ac­tive­ly search­ing for the tug.

The min­istry added that no for­mal spend­ing lim­it had been es­tab­lished.

Mooni­lal, Young spar over doc­u­ments

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal told Guardian Me­dia In­ves­ti­ga­tions Desk that the State is work­ing to sup­port its claims be­fore the Feb­ru­ary 2027 dead­line.

“The to­tal bill for the clean-up spent by the gov­ern­ment through the Min­istry of En­er­gy tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey was more or less $311 mil­lion, of which we have re­ceived $61 mil­lion from the com­pen­sa­tion fund. So we have over $250 mil­lion out­stand­ing,” Mooni­lal said.

The min­is­ter said the process was be­ing slowed by miss­ing pa­per­work linked to spend­ing un­der the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion.

“What is trou­bling for me is that in do­ing this busi­ness of get­ting the claims in or­der and so on, it ap­pears that the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion un­der Mr Stu­art Young, Dr Row­ley and oth­ers spent mon­ey, and we do not have prop­er pa­per­work or ac­count­abil­i­ty, trans­paren­cy,” he said.

“I some cas­es, we can­not even ver­i­fy where the mon­ey went and the ex­pen­di­ture of what now is over $250 mil­lion on the clean-up op­er­a­tions.”

Mooni­lal added: “We are work­ing on this, but we are strug­gling be­cause a lot of mon­ey was paid out and we can­not find the pa­per­work and the ac­count­abil­i­ty sys­tems in place.”

Mooni­lal did not iden­ti­fy the spe­cif­ic pay­ments, con­trac­tors or in­voic­es for which records were miss­ing. And fol­low-up ques­tions were unan­swered.

But for­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Stu­art Young said min­is­ters were not re­spon­si­ble for keep­ing those records.

“Mooni­lal con­tin­ues to show how in­com­pe­tent and dis­hon­est he is. Nei­ther a Prime Min­is­ter nor a Min­is­ter would be in­volved in doc­u­men­ta­tion or records, or rather they should not be. I can­not at­test to how the UNC gov­ern­ment op­er­ates, as they ap­pear to get in­volved in pro­cure­ment, etc. All doc­u­men­ta­tion and record-keep­ing were han­dled by the com­pe­tent pub­lic ser­vants who man­aged the process. If Mooni­lal is to be be­lieved, then he should con­tact the Per­ma­nent Sec­re­taries he moved from the Min­istry of En­er­gy and the oth­er hon­est and com­pe­tent staff that he and Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar were quick to re­move from the Min­istry of En­er­gy.”

Young al­so said he did not in­volve him­self in pro­cure­ment linked to the oil spill clean-up but in­stead ad­vo­cat­ed in Lon­don for T&T to ac­cess the IPOC funds.