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SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — An offshore oil spill that prompted Trinidad and Tobago to declare a national emergency earlier this month involves hundreds of thousands of gallons of fuel, some of which has reached the shores of the Dutch Caribbean island of Bonaire hundreds of miles away, authorities said. This is the first estimate of the size of the spill, and the first sign of how far the leaked oil has traveled.
A minimum of 420,000 gallons (1.6 million liters) of oil mixed with water have been vacuumed near Tobago where a barge capsized, officials announced Wednesday. However, they warned the number is likely larger since it does not include oil picked up with sand and sargassum.
Augustine warned that “a spill of this size” would take up to eight months to be fully cleaned, with waste-management efforts taking more than a year and remediation efforts such as replanting mango trees and repopulating ecosystems taking up to three years.
“We are in this for the long haul,” he said at a press conference.
Officials have not provided a preliminary estimate of the damage the spill caused, noting the investigation is ongoing.
