An offshore oil spill has been declared a national emergency by the Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister Keith Rowley.
The boat Gulfstream overturned off the coast of Tobago last week, leaking oil into the Caribbean waters surrounding the island.
The oil spread both on the ocean and onto land, according to the Trinidad and Tobago Office of Disaster Preparedness and Management (OPDM).
At a press conference Sunday, Mr. Rowley explained that “on this occasion we have a mysterious vessel coming into our coastline and making contact with a reef.”
OPDM urged beachgoers and fishermen away from a 7-mile stretch of coast between Rockly Bay and Canoe Bay. The scale of the spill led Mr. Rowley to describe the situation as a national emergency.
He added that the nation’s authorities do not yet know what type of boat the “Gulfstream” was, where it came from, or exactly what it was carrying.
“An unknown vessel has apparently drifted upside down into Tobago. That vessel, we don’t know who it belongs to. We have no idea where it came from and we also don’t know all that it contains,” Mr. Rowley said.
The spill comes right before Carnival season in the islands, canceling the annual economic bonanza for boat and tour operators in the affected areas of coast.
“This opportunity was cruelly taken away from them,” Davendranath Tancoo, a member of the Trinidad and Tobago House of Representatives, told Agence France-Presse.
• Brad Matthews can be reached at bmatthews@washingtontimes.com.
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