Tobago can declare the oil spill situation under control – at least somewhat.
That’s according to Director of the Tobago Emergency Management Agency (TEMA) Allan Stewart.
He warned, however, that Tobago could lose control if the team prematurely retreats.
Stewart speaking at a Tobago House of Assembly (THA) post-Executive Council media briefing yesterday, said: “We have reached to a stage where we can say we can climb that very steep hill and we have operation Gulfstream under control.”
He said the team has started flushing trapped hydrocarbon between the rocks and along the shoreline.
“We ought not to be deceived by the eye of the storm. I want to alert the population that until we are clear with knowing the quantities of fuel in the vessel then we are not out of the woods,” he said.
On Tuesday, T&T Salvage tapped the barge to extract fuel for testing from the vessel.
Stewart said TEMA is scaling back on its operations.
“We have still been getting technical advice on certain matters as we scale back the operations but we are very mindful that that vessel still has a content of hydrocarbon we have to pay attention to otherwise we may just be going through the eye of the storm where on the other side we could be hit again,” he explained.