The Gulfstream: a barge without a number, a tug that vanished and a spill no one has claimed

This is the fourth piece in an investigation that began on 15 February. On the morning of 7 February an overturned vessel was reported leaking oil on a reef off Cove, on Tobago's south-western coast. Twelve days on, the slick has blackened beaches and mangroves, fishermen have been kept off the water, and the Government has declared a national emergency. The State still cannot say who owns the vessel, who was towing it, or where it was going.2

What is known

Divers found a name on the hull: Gulfstream. They did not find the International Maritime Organization number that would identify a ship beyond doubt. On 14 February Bellingcat reported that the likely explanation was that the Gulfstream was an unpowered barge, one half of an articulated tug-and-barge unit that never carried a number of its own. The same day the Ministry of National Security said two vessels were involved: a tug, the Solo Creed, which it said was bound for Guyana from Panama, and an unnamed barge.2

Ship-tracking data shows a gap. The tug's Automatic Identification System, the transponder that broadcasts a vessel's position, went dark for days while it was in Venezuelan waters, after a reported call at Aruba. TankerTrackers, which monitors oil shipments, said on 15 February that the barge had been seen in Pozuelos Bay, Venezuela, through the last week of January, and may have been carrying as much as 35,000 barrels of fuel oil. That bay serves a refinery and terminal of Petróleos de Venezuela, the state oil company.3

This morning on Tobago Updates' Good Morning Tobago, I set out for Kandace Jackson what the tracking record shows and what it does not. The cargo, on the evidence available, was heavy fuel oil, a refined product, rather than crude. One route I was examining at the time pointed toward St Vincent and the Grenadines, where a transfer may have been planned. It was a hypothesis, not a finding: a vessel with its transponder off can be heading anywhere, and the final destination remained unresolved. Later documentary evidence pointed to Guyana.1

The investigation had by then moved through four evidentiary stages: the physical wreck at Cove; open-source identification of the barge-and-tug combination; satellite observations through Venezuelan waters; and direct questions to TankerTrackers about the signal gap, cargo and vessel history. Each stage narrowed the inquiry without supplying the missing commercial documents.

How I put the investigation together

I began with the contradiction in the public account: the State could name a route and a tug but not an owner. I then followed the vessel rather than the name painted on the barge. The hull identified an unpowered unit. The tug supplied a trackable identity. The satellite sequence supplied positions when public AIS did not. The Pozuelo Bay observation supplied a place to test the cargo question. The estimated volume supplied a way to distinguish a plausible fuel cargo from a crude-oil explanation.

That sequence produced the questions I took on air: where the tow had actually travelled; why the signal disappeared; what could have been loaded in the bay; whether the Gulfstream name was distracting from the tug's stable identity; what happened when the barge separated; why no owner had presented itself; why the response had not been escalated; and how fishers would be compensated while liability remained unresolved.1

I did not treat the answers from TankerTrackers as official findings. I used them to test the Government's account and to identify the records that could settle it: AIS history, satellite observations, registry records, port and terminal logs, cargo documents, a casualty report and the communications made after the tow was lost.

What the State knew, and when

The Government's statements established that agencies had a tug name and a stated route. They did not explain the source of that route, when the tug was last contacted, which flag-state or port authorities had been approached, or whether a casualty report existed. A public chronology should disclose those steps without compromising any active enforcement work.

The questions

Who owns the Solo Creed, and where is it now? A tug does not lose a barge without knowing. No distress call has been reported. The tug has not been located.2

Why was a vessel of this kind moving through Venezuelan waters with its transponder off? Switching off AIS is a recognised method of concealing ship-to-ship transfers, and the southern Caribbean sits on routes used to move sanctioned fuel. That is context, and it is not proof of what this particular voyage was for. It is a line of inquiry the authorities have not publicly acknowledged.13

Why did the Ministry of Energy's public explanation lean on the difficulty of tracing a common vessel name? Many vessels share names. Registered ships are identified by number, as a car is identified by its chassis, and the absence of a number is itself a finding that needs explaining.1

Why has the response not been raised to Tier 3, the level that brings in international assistance? The Chief Secretary has spoken publicly about wanting it escalated. Central government has not done so. The clean-up has been carried by Tobagonians and responders working with what they have.1

And who compensates the fisherfolk? Their losses are not hypothetical. Relief should reach them now, without their having to petition for it, while the State pursues whoever is liable.1

Accountability therefore has two tracks. One is maritime: identify the registered, operational and cargo interests behind the tow. The other is governmental: account for the warning, response, escalation, environmental sampling and financial support available to affected communities. Finding a shipowner later would not answer whether the State responded adequately in the first days.

What came later

The paragraphs above set out what was on the record on 19 February. The reporting since has answered some of the questions and sharpened others.

On 20 February Bellingcat published satellite imagery tracing the tug and barge from Colón, Panama, to Pozuelos Bay, where AIS was off, and showing that the barge was leaking oil from about 3 February, immediately after leaving the bay, and appeared to have capsized by the morning of 6 February. It also found that the Gulfstream had been renamed Sea Marlin some time before 2018.3

On 3 March Bellingcat and the Trinidad and Tobago Guardian reported, from registration documents supplied by the Zanzibar Maritime Authority, that the Solo Creed belonged to a director of Melaj Offshore Corporation, a Panama-based firm with a history of transporting Venezuelan oil. Court records described the barge as “presenting water leaks” months before the voyage.4

Oil taken from the wreck was analysed by the Institute of Marine Affairs and identified as persistent Bunker Fuel C, according to Trinidad and Tobago's submission to the international oil pollution compensation funds.7

The same international record later described the barge as carrying 4,652 tonnes and recorded the compensation mechanism available to claimants. That supplied documentary detail absent from the February debate and confirmed why preserving loss records for fishers, businesses and clean-up agencies was essential.8

On 26 May Bellingcat confirmed that the Solo Creed, dark since 5 February, had been detained by the Angolan Navy off Luanda on 11 May. The Ministry of Energy and Energy Industries later announced that an Angolan court had ordered the tug arrested to secure Trinidad and Tobago's claim, which it put at more than $244 million as a preliminary figure.56

The tug was found. The owner of the barge, by the State's own account to the compensation funds, has not been.

The later findings validate some early lines of inquiry—the Venezuela passage, fuel type and importance of the tug's stable identifier—while leaving the central discipline intact. Movement data did not prove purpose. A fuel assessment did not prove a buyer. A registry trail for the tug did not automatically identify every interest behind the barge or cargo.