Tug accused of February’s massive Caribbean oil spill arrested on separate charges in Angola

Nearly four months after Tobago suffered one of its worst environmental disasters, the vessel alleged to have been involved has been tracked down thousands of kilometres away in another continent and arrested on separate charges.

On the morning of February 7, local authorities detected an oil slick spewing from a capsized vessel off the west coast of Tobago. The slick quickly hit the southwest shoreline of the Caribbean island with a national emergency declared.

The tug and the barge involved were eventually identified as the Solo Creed and the Gulfstream, both having a history of towing Venezuelan oil. The barge’s final, fateful voyage saw it take some 35,000 barrels of oil on a voyage that was meant to end in Guyana, but along the way, the barge ran into difficulties.

After the 48-year-old barge capsized off the coast of Tobago, the oil slick spread hundreds of kilometres west and reached the east coast of the Dutch Caribbean island of Bonaire and later Aruba and Grenada. In total, the oil spill clean-up is estimated to have cost $23.5m so far. 

In an exclusive investigation by the Trinidad & Tobago Guardian and Bellingcat, a Dutch journalism group, the Solo Creed has now been found. It turns out that the tug was arrested on May 11 in Angola for an unauthorised breach of the African nation’s claimed offshore oil security perimeter of oil extraction blocks 17 and 18. The vessel is currently at anchor in Luanda Bay. 

Stuart Young, Trinidad & Tobago’s energy minister, has got in touch with counterparts in Angola, and is assessing the new information that has come to light.

Both the tug and the barge had no insurance when they ran into difficulty in February, with their ownership also shrouded in mystery to begin with. It has since emerged that Abraham Olalekan of Nigeria was the owner of the tug and barge.