Response Coordination Between Multiple Countries in the Wider Caribbean Region Following a Possible 6 Million Gallon Oil Spill

Abstract

As the 2017 International Oil Spill Conference (IOSC) was wrapping up in Los Angeles, CA, an oil spill on a magnitude no one had expected was making its way across the lower Wider Caribbean Region. The Regional Activity Center, The Regional Marine Pollution Emergency, Information and Training Centre – Caribe (RAC/REMPEITC-Caribe), that was established in 1994 under the Cartegena Convention, stood up for the first time as a regionally coordinating body to facilitate communication, coordination and exchange of information during a major spill as was designed and intended under the Caribbean Oil Pollution Preparedness, Response and Cooperation (OPRC) Plan. What was confirmed months later, was that a large spill from a refinery in Trinidad and Tobago had in fact impacted the States of Venezuela, Bonaire, Curacao and Aruba. On April 23, 2017, it became public knowledge that a spill had occurred from a 150,000 barrel (6.3 million gallon) waste oil tank at the Petrotrin Refinery in Pointe-a Pierre, Trinidad. What fallowed was successive reporting of subsurface oil and tarballs washing ashore over a thirty-six day period: first on Venezuelan Gulf of Paria coasts; then Paria, Isla Margarita, Los Roques and La Orchila coasts; followed by Bonnaire; then Klein Curacao and Curacao; and ultimately beaches in Aruba. Had it not been for the coordinating body of RAC/REMPEITCCaribe, these impacts may have never been officially connected to a single point source. Miraculously, through the Regional Center each of the impacted States exchanged oil samples from each other's coasts and the potential source tank in Trinidad. Subsequent analysis from laboratories in the Netherlands proved that the oiling events, which occurred across 600 nautical miles of ocean, were in fact from the same source, Storage Tank #70 of the Petrotrin Refinery. This paper discusses how RAC/REMPEITC-Caribe worked across borders to help identify the source of a spill that reached across more than 600 miles of the Wider Caribbean Region, and shows just how connected these countries are. It sheds light on a major oil spill that few people outside the impacted countries are aware of, and it presents the April 2017 Petrotrin Spill as a realization that, not only are these scenarios likely, they are real cause for increased regional spill coordination and preparation.