(CMR) The FSO Nabarima oil tanker is about to create an environmental disaster off the coast of Venezuela and Trinidad and Tobago with 1.3 million barrels of oil on board as it begins capsizing.
Environmentalists are warning that the tanker anchored in the Gulf of Paria could create a ‘dead sea' in the Caribbean if the oil spills arguing that the region has never that large of an ecological disaster.
FSO Nabarima is a floating storage and offloading vessel that is permanently moored offshore of Venezuela at the Corocoro oil field in the Gulf of Paria, located between Venezuela and the island of Trinidad.
The 2005 tanker is owned by the Venezuelan state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA). Reports are that valves on board the vessel have malfunctioned. The issue was reported by the crew back in August but the company has allegedly downplayed the issues.
Footage was in circulation earlier today showing the state of the tanker. It appears to be held up by some anchor chains as one man declares that the government of Trinidad and Tobago have done nothing about the situation.
After production at Corocoro ceased in 2019 following United States sanctions on the Venezuelan state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), Nabarima fell into a state of disrepair and was reported in 2020 to be at risk of spilling her cargo of about 1.3 million barrels of crude oil.
With potential weather systems being monitored in the Caribbean sea the combination of the two would be disastrous.
The vessel has had a sorted history after, in 2007, Venezuela seized control of Corocoro and Nabarima, which passed into the control of a joint venture of PDVSA and an Italian oil company In early 2019, Petrosucre shut down production at Corocoro after the United States placed sanctions on PDVSA that prevented Petrosucre from exporting oil to Citgo, which had previously purchased Corocoro oil.
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