Trinidad and Tobago fishermen are calling for a state of environmental emergency for an oil tanker sinking with 1. 3 million barrels of oil.
If oil were spilled, it would threaten the entire southern Caribbean, lasting 264 meters and a capacity of 1. 4 million barrels, the spill would be five times worse than the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska in 1989, which is the worst in history before the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon.
The authorities have been criticized for allowing the scenario to evolve for 3 months without taking sufficient action. The Nabarima is a Venezuelan oil tanker but partly exploited through the $55 billion Italian giant ENI, and has been caught up in U. S. sanctions since the disputed election. questioned the legitimacy of the Venezuelan president. Fear since it was first detected in July and crews later discovered a water leak on board. The scenario has gradually worsened since then.
Just last week, a representative of Trinidad’s fishing community, Gary Aboud, was able to get close enough to the heavily registered Venezuelan oil tanker to show first-hand the seriousness of the risk, especially with the Caribbean in a very active 2020 hurricane season. , which will not end until 30 November.
Combined with photographs of drones to show the angle of inclination, his two-and-a-half minute video (link below) shows the threat that bad weather would have in the oil tanker, and what he poses as a lack of urgency in the Trinidad and Tobago government component or the foreign network to act.
With the oil spill in Mauritius in August, the UN maritime regulator, the International Maritime Organization, sent representatives to coordinate the efforts of the Unstripe oil spill in Wakashio, however, it was widely noted that they exacerbated the oil spill crisis. discusses oil and emission targets for ships in London this week amid complaints that environmental criteria are being diluted by the UN agency.
Gary Aboud, general secretary of the Trinidad and Tobago-based environmental group Fishermen and Friends of the Sea, visited the Nabarima site, moored in Venezuelan waters, to highlight the threat posed to Trinidad and Tobago’s more than 50,000 sea-dependent fishermen, long-term prospective ecological damage to venezuelan species on coral reefs and biodiversity matrix , as well as the broader regional threat to the Caribbean given the direction of currents and wind at this time of year.
Reports from the Guardian of Trinidad and Tobago had been requesting since early September.
According to a spokesman for Trinidad and Tobago’s Energy Minister Franklin Khan, who spoke to The Guardian on September 4, “The Ministry of Energy [of Trinidad and Tobago] through the Venezuelan Embassy has submitted to the Venezuelan government any technical or logistical assistance that may require in addition, the Minister of Energy is in contact with his Venezuelan counterpart for additional updates as they become available.
A moving video through Gary Aboud first released on September 7, six weeks ago, highlighted the growing threat of tanker rollover, combined with the existing season, the second highest ever recorded.
The Nabarima has a capacity of 1. 4 million barrels and has been abandoned unmanned across the Venezuelan state and a joint venture with Italian energy giant ENI after U. S. sanctions in 2019.
There were photographs and warnings about the arrival of water on board when Venezuelan oil company Eudis Girot first published them on August 30. Syndicat. Il has actively advocated for malfunctioning disorders and environmental hazards in Venezuela in the past.
Six weeks later, Gary Aboud, whose photographs this weekend were taken next to the tanker, showed that the angle of registration had replaced what he estimated at 25 degrees.
There have been 26 storms named so far for the 2020 hurricane season, making it the highest time on record, the 2005 season, which ends on November 30.
With prevailing currents and wind direction, an oil spill of this magnitude would threaten the southern Caribbean over the next few years.
This main tourist attractions like Grenada, Barbados, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.
The island and coral chain is a component of a genetic formula of coral reefs stretching from Venezuela along the Caribbean to the Florida coast.
The local coral reefs of Venezuela and Trinidad and Tobago are essential for the fitness of Caribbean coral ecosystems. Each island has a genetically exclusive set of corals that originally evolved from Trinidad’s corals, and the ocean microbiome (bacteria that grow around corals) is essential to give corals their color and life. Other Caribbean coral systems have depended on the reception of healthy nutrients and bacteria from those corals of origin for thousands of years.
It is these bacteria that can be damaged by a primary oil spill, causing long-term genetic damage to corals that are already under climate stress.
Oil spills and their destructive chemicals (such as PSEs) have a long-term genetic effect on coastal ecosystems, affecting the gender balance of species and other parts of the genetic code that humans understand slightly. sinking of ever-healthy marine ecosystems, as has been observed in other parts of the world.
If the Nabarima oil tanker disintegrates, it would be Venezuela’s fourth primary oil spill in the last 3 months alone, and at worst, in addition to a primary oil spill off the coast of Brazil in September last year of a shipment it had repossessed in Venezuela.
Venezuela has already been criticized for two major oil leaks in national parks in the last two months alone, in terms of continuous air emission pollutants, amid developing considerations on express refineries in Venezuela administered by state oil company PDVSA.
The outstanding El Palito refinery next to the biodiversity hotspot and around the world Ramsar National Park in Morrocoy has involved environmentalists. There are now reports that he was injured on October 9, which temporarily knocked him out of service. that the network of pipelines aged and poorly maintained around the refinery is also in poor condition, and is also causing several leaks. These leaks can be easily known via satellite (namely the artificial opening radar that Finnish company Iceye was able to supply to Mauritius and proved to be very effective in responding to oil spills).
A pipeline leak at the Cadron refinery in the west of the country also resulted in the release of an unknown amount of oil into the ocean last month.
In early August, a sent leak was suspected of fleeing the biodiversity-rich Morocco National Park, which includes mangrove forests from Ramsar wetlands around the world.
Last September, oil from a shipment from Venezuela washed more than 2,000 tons of oil from poisonous shipments along Brazil’s beaches, prompting a local declaration of state of emergency.
Venezuela has noticed a deterioration in the human, social, economic and environmental rights situation since the controversial presidential elections on 20 May 2018. Numerous allegations of voter fraud have been made. The National Assembly declared Nicols Maduro a “usurpador” of the presidency on the day of his inauguration, January 10, 2019. La Supreme Court of Justice of Venezuela has declared the National Assembly “unconstitutional”. Presidential aspiring Juan Guaidao declared himself interim president and took the presidential oath on January 23, 2019.
Juan Guaida has been identified as Interim President of Venezuela through more than 60 countries (including the United States), while Nicolás Maduro has been identified across 20 countries. The Organization of American States (OAS) has declared Maduro’s presidency illegitimate and called for new elections, however, the United Nations has identified Maduro’s government as Venezuela’s legal representative, however, in a subsequent, scathing report published on 16 September 2020, the UN accused Maduro of crimes against humanity.
Poorly drafted UN and IMO legislation creates threat to poorer countries
Trinidad and Tobago’s Energy Minister highlighted the complexity of controlling oil spills across foreign borders. Addressing the Guardian of Trinidad and Tobago on September 4, Khan said: “The country must be reminded that Venezuela is a sovereign state and that T
This highlights the threat posed by poorly drafted legislation in the IMO. Several of these laws have a greater threat posed by oil spills in third countries through which global shipping has required an “innocent step. “, there are several third-party vessels passing through Iran and passing through Venezuela that pose a major threat to any of the states.
Both Mauritius and Sri Lanka have suffered this summer due to hard-to-understand legal loopholes generated by maritime insurance and the oil industry, raising doubts as to whether foreign law promoted through the United Nations International Maritime Organization in the countries of the global community or designed for the Multimillion-Dollar Maritime Transport Industries , petroleum and maritime insurance. The more you look, the less transparent the answers will be.
The last oil tanker to sink follows a number of primary maritime and oil problems during the summer. One of the most infamous spills was that of the Wakashio granelero in Mauritius in the Indian Ocean.
Between 200,000 and 310,000 gallons of oil were spilled into the island nation’s pristine coral lagoons (and the owner of the Japanese ship released the final figures nearly two months after the oil spill).
Local tourism and fishing communities have been devastated by the effect of the oil spill. Several primary nature reserves, such as internationally protected Ramsar mangrove sites in Pointe d’Esny and the world-protected Blue Bay Marine Park, have been flooded with heavy oil along the coast, likely resulting in decades of long-term environmental risks. A small island containing many of Mauritius’ 322 threatened species was also directly affected by the oil spill, which led several to the breaking point of extinction.
A Caribbean resident, Sir Richard Branson, has called for a comprehensive reform of maritime transport since the mauritius oil spill. In statements to Forbes in August, he said: “Global shipping deserves to do its day-to-day work and offer its services to the other countries of Mauritius. people to remove contaminants and track and rehabilitate the entire site in the long run. “
Ocean scientist and explorer Dr. Sylvia Earle asked Japanese owners of the sunken shipwreck off Mauritius to lift the oil spill from the seabed and return to a shipyard for safe dismantling.
Even the Pope and the UN secretary-general have had to interfere several times this summer in global shipping, as industry has failed to ensure the protection of 400,000 sailors stranded in oil tankers, bulk carriers, container carriers and cruisers around the world.
The Secretary-General of the United Nations has the global maritime transport crisis, a “humanitarian catastrophe. “
The dangers to Trinidad and Venezuela from the sinking of the Nabarima oil tanker adhere to Monday’s protests against the UN International Maritime Organization (IMO). Activists from the environmental NGO Ocean Rebellion say that the billions of carbon from heavy oil are causing a climate emergency and it is not easy for the organization of the maximumly harsh G20 countries to interfere to radically shake up the criteria of protection and environmental in the industry.
The UN firm has been criticized for undermining the Paris Agreement, with proposals that will particularly increase the carbon emissions of the world’s sixth largest emitter (global maritime transport), well beyond the global carbon budget needed for global climate stability.
Even French President Emmanuel Macron has been heavily criticized for French proposals on greenhouse fuel emissions from maritime transport that would well make the Paris agreement redundant.
It is the week that Japan’s new prime minister, Yoshihde Suga, has come under fire for defending the dumping of radioactive water from Fukushima into the ocean.
With nine primary oil spills this year alone, and Trinidad and Tobago now in the typhoon’s eye of the latest global shipping crisis, will this industry ever reform?
Or the quiet complicity of major shipping insurance companies, shipping companies and sustainable maritime states that pride themselves on their sustainability credentials will also be a stain on the industry.
2020 was intended to be the most important year for the environment, someone forgot to tell the global shipping industry.
I am an economist of progression focused on innovation, sustainability and moral economic growth. Lately I’ve been working with the leading generation corporations in Silicon Valley in
I am an economist of progression focused on innovation, sustainability and moral economic expansion. Lately I’ve been working with leading generation corporations in Silicon Valley on opportunities for sustainable expansion, i. e. targeting low-income countries. WEF Global Network of Experts and member of the CCICED China Council. My e-book on sustainability in the fourth industrial revolution, Soul of the Sea in the Age of the Algorithm, focuses on a revival of oceans and climate and is based on my delight as an advisor to the economics and innovation of Fortune 500’s global governments and CEOs. I have a degree in progressive economics from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and the University of Cambridge.