SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — An offshore oil spill that prompted Trinidad and Tobago to declare a national emergency earlier this month involves hundreds of thousands of gallons of fuel, some of which has reached the shores of the Dutch Caribbean island of Bonaire hundreds of miles away, authorities said. This is the first estimate of the size of the spill, and the first sign of how far the leaked oil has traveled.
A minimum of 420,000 gallons (1.6 million liters) of oil mixed with water have been vacuumed near Tobago where a barge capsized, officials announced Wednesday. However, they warned the number is likely larger since it does not include oil picked up with sand and sargassum.
“A substantial amount of this material found its way out of Tobago as well,” said Farley Augustine, chief secretary of the Tobago House of Assembly. “It’s hard to estimate precisely how much leaked out of the vessel.”
Augustine warned that “a spill of this size” would take up to eight months to be fully cleaned, with waste-management efforts taking more than a year and remediation efforts such as replanting mango trees and repopulating ecosystems taking up to three years.
“We are in this for the long haul,” he said at a press conference.
Officials have not provided a preliminary estimate of the damage the spill caused, noting the investigation is ongoing.
Augustine said the government has some leads but declined to share details: “We will have sufficient time to prosecute this matter, and we most definitely will.”
The oil spill was blamed on an overturned barge that had departed from Panama and was being tugged to nearby Guyana when it began to sink, according to a preliminary investigation. The owner of the barge has not been identified.
Allan Stewart, director of Tobago’s emergency management agency, said rugged terrain and cliffs in Lambeau and parts of Scarborough in the island’s southern region have complicated cleanup efforts.
He said the local government also needs…
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