> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.lacaribenanews.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # A Barge Loaded With 8,080 Barrels of Waste Oil Has Sat at Its Owner's Wharf Since January. The Court Asked to Settle the Dispute Said It Had No Jurisdiction. - URL: https://www.lacaribenanews.com/guyana-barge-8080-barrels-waste-oil-court-no-jurisdiction-2026/ - Published: 2026-10-23T01:15:24.000Z - Updated: 2026-11-01T05:20:02.000Z - Description: Guyana's Civil Defence Commission activated a response by six agencies on 20 October 2026 after a barge holding waste oil listed at a private East Bank Demerara wharf. A High Court application over the barge was dismissed in September for want of jurisdiction and referred to arbitration. - Author: Theon Alleyne - Tags: Guyana, Business, Energy, Environment, Courts **Quick summary:** Guyana's Civil Defence Commission activated a response by six agencies on 20 October 2026 after a barge holding waste oil listed at a private East Bank Demerara wharf. A High Court application over the barge was dismissed in September for want of jurisdiction and referred to arbitration. By LCN Business Desk The emergency began on 20 October. The cargo has been aboard since December. Containment booms are now around the vessel, which the Civil Defence Commission says is upright with its cargo intact. It is there because of a commercial dispute that a court declined to hear. ## Whose cargo is it? Three private companies appear in the court documents, and two of them are in dispute. | Role | Party | | ---------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | Sold the parcel | WGS Enterprises, St Lucia | | Bought it | South Eastern Shipping Corporation, Miami, Florida | | Contracted to uplift and ship it out of Guyana | Ganshyam Mahase and Mahase Lumber Yard, Great Diamond, East Bank Demerara | Source: court documents as described by News Source Guyana, 21 October 2026. Every party in the dispute is a private company, and none of them is Guyanese except the barge owner. The cargo is in Guyana, the vessel is at a Guyanese wharf, and the agreement that governs both sends any argument about them to arbitration. The quantity in the filings is **8,080 barrels**. The figure in the Commission's own statements is "approximately 8,000". ## Where did the oil come from? The published account traces the sale to a St Lucia seller and stops there. South Eastern Shipping bought the cargo from **WGS Enterprises of St Lucia**. What WGS bought it from is not in that account. News Source Guyana adds, in its own words rather than from the filings, that WGS Enterprises holds a contract with the **Guyana Power and Light Company (GPL)** to buy and remove waste oil from its power generating plants. That is a statement about the company, not about this cargo. Nothing published says this cargo came through that contract, and this newspaper has not established that it did. ## What went wrong, and when? A leak was found in the hull within weeks of loading, and the barge then moved. The charter was agreed in **December 2025**. After the oil was aboard, a leak was discovered in the hull. South Eastern Shipping invoked the off-hire clause in the agreement and stopped paying, having found the vessel unseaworthy. All of this falls between December 2025 and January 2026. The Miami company also told the court that the barge was **removed from its agreed location and taken to the owner's own premises without its knowledge**, and has remained there since January. The same filings record its concern about the environmental impact of an already leaking barge. The vessel now under emergency monitoring reached that wharf nine months ago, carrying a cargo it had been found unfit to carry. ## What did the court decide? That it could not hear the case at all. The barge owner applied to the High Court to terminate the agreement and recover the money that stopped when the off-hire clause was invoked. The method proposed for recovering it was to **sell the waste oil stored in the barge**. In September the court dismissed the application, citing the arbitration clause in the agreement and holding that it had no jurisdiction to entertain the matter. It referred the parties to arbitration. A dismissal for want of jurisdiction decides nothing about who is right. It decides only where the question belongs. The question went to arbitration, and **News Source Guyana reports that one month on, arbitration had yet to begin.** These are the only published particulars of the ruling. They come from News Source Guyana, which states it obtained the court documents. This newspaper has not seen the ruling itself, and no second outlet has reported its contents. ## Who owns the barge, on the public record? A contractor to the Office of the President. Guyana's National Procurement and Tender Administration records two awards to the owner's name: | Contract | Description | Value | | ----------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------- | | Office of the President 296/2023/01 | Men on Mission, construction of 20x30 timber houses, Regions 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 10 | G$132,133,228 | | Office of the President 141/2025/01 | Construction of a 600 square foot house, Little Diamond, East Bank Demerara, Region 4 | G$104,808,100 | Source: NPTAB awarded-tenders record. Both awards were by National Competitive Bidding. Together those come to **G$236.9 million**, both from the Office of the President, the later one awarded in June 2025, six months before the barge was contracted to carry the waste oil. The names are not written identically across the records. The awards read "Ganshyam Mahase & Mahase Lumber Supply" and "Genshyam Mahase & Mahase Lumber Supply"; the filings, as reported, read "Ganshyam Mahase and Mahase Lumber yard of Great Diamond". The 2025 contract is for a house at Little Diamond, the next village. A separate name, "Mahase Construction", appears in the same procurement records against road contracts and is not treated here as the same entity. ## Who is responding now? The Civil Defence Commission is leading six other agencies. Those are the **Maritime Administration Department**, the **Environmental Protection Agency**, the **Guyana Energy Agency**, the **Guyana Fire Service**, the **Ministry of Agriculture's Fisheries Department** and the **Guyana Defence Force Coast Guard**. Its update states that booms were deployed as a precautionary measure to restrict the movement of any oil, that corrective measures are being taken to stabilise the vessel, and that the situation is under control. No spill has been confirmed. ## Is there a law for oil pollution that is not about exploration? Yes, and it names the Commission now running this response. The **Oil Pollution Prevention, Preparedness, Response and Responsibility Act 2025** was passed by the National Assembly on 16 May 2025, as Bill No. 7 of 2025\. Reports of it describe a framework reaching oil pollution risks in the exploration, production, **transportation and handling** of petroleum, so it is not confined to drilling. It designates the **Civil Defence Commission** as the competent national authority for oil spill preparedness and response, makes the Commission's Director-General the National Incident Commander, and establishes a National Oil Spill Committee within the Commission drawing in the Environmental Protection Agency, the Maritime Administration Department, the Guyana Energy Agency, the Guyana Fire Service, the Guyana Defence Force and others. The response at the wharf draws on the same bodies, and it is led by the Commission rather than by a ministry, which is the shape the statute sets out. The Act is also reported to impose strict liability on "Responsible Parties", a class taking in shipowners and operators and in some circumstances charterers, and to require financial assurance against pollution damage. These particulars are reports of the Act rather than the Act itself. In a Stabroek News feature on 23 May 2025, Christopher Ram described the Bill as leaving "petroleum operations" undefined and as carrying "undefined, critical terms like pipelines, transportation systems, subcontractors". On enforcement he wrote that the Commission is: "empowered to audit only the records, not to conduct a physical or other inspection" He also wrote that the Bill stops short of establishing a proper licensing regime, and that its financial responsibility standard requires coverage only "as far as practicable". Whether the Act reaches this barge is not answerable from what is published. The law exists, it is not limited to exploration, and the body it puts in charge is the one that has been monitoring a listing vessel since 20 October. ## Why does a hire dispute become an environmental question? Because nothing in the dispute obliged anyone to move the oil while it ran. The off-hire clause settled who stops paying. The arbitration clause settled where the argument happens. Neither addresses the cargo, and the one body that might have ordered something about it never reached the question. Guyana's wider experience of arbitration as the forum for its resource disputes was examined in [What the IMF Actually Said About Guyana's Exxon Cost-Oil Audits](https://www.lacaribenanews.com/imf-guyana-article-iv-cost-oil-audits-arbitration-2026/), and the Full Court's willingness to send a case back for full trial in [Guyana Courts Reopen the Debanking File](https://www.lacaribenanews.com/guyana-full-court-scotiabank-harbhajan-debanking/). The Demerara River the vessel is lying in is also the country's main artery for interior trade, whose own reliability was the subject of [A 1959 Ferry Is Still Alongside at Bartica](https://www.lacaribenanews.com/bartica-ferry-reliability-interior-trade-logistics-guyana-2026/). ## What is not established? The owner's identity is reported two ways, and the regulatory position is not public. Kaieteur News reports that the Commission has not disclosed the owner, and that the barge is **believed** to belong to a company that opened at **Coverden** in 2024, against which citizens had objected and matters had reached the High Court. Coverden is not Great Diamond, and that account is reported as belief rather than record. On the public record this newspaper can find, the Environmental Protection Agency has published no permit position on the storage of waste oil at that wharf, and no agency has published what the arrangements were for a loaded barge to remain there from January to October. ### The entities - **Civil Defence Commission (CDC)** is leading the response and issued the updates quoted here. - **WGS Enterprises** of St Lucia is named in the court documents as the seller of the parcel. - **Guyana Power and Light Company (GPL)** is the state electricity utility reported, in one outlet's own account, to hold a waste-oil removal contract with WGS Enterprises. - **National Procurement and Tender Administration (NPTAB)** publishes the awarded-tenders record carrying the two Office of the President contracts. - **South Eastern Shipping Corporation** of Miami, Florida bought the parcel and contracted the barge. - **Ganshyam Mahase and Mahase Lumber Yard** of Great Diamond, East Bank Demerara, are named in the court documents as the barge's owner. - **Maritime Administration Department (MARAD)**, the **Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)**, the **Guyana Energy Agency (GEA)**, the **Guyana Fire Service**, the **Ministry of Agriculture's Fisheries Department** and the **Guyana Defence Force Coast Guard** are the responding agencies. - **Oil Pollution Prevention, Preparedness, Response and Responsibility Act 2025** is the statute, Bill No. 7 of 2025, naming the Commission as competent national authority. - **Christopher Ram** published an assessment of the Bill in Stabroek News on 23 May 2025. - **Off-hire clause** is the contractual term South Eastern Shipping invoked to stop payments. - **Arbitration clause** is the term the High Court relied on in declining jurisdiction. ### What the title card shows Every data point on the article's title card, in text. - **8,080.** Barrels of waste oil aboard, the figure in the court documents. Source: News Source Guyana, 21 October 2026. - **Since January.** How long the barge has been at the owner's premises, per the Miami company's filings. - **Six** agencies, plus the Civil Defence Commission, in the response activated on 20 October 2026. - **G$236.9 million.** The two Office of the President contracts recorded to that name. Source: NPTAB awarded-tenders record. - **Panel:** WGS Enterprises of St Lucia sold the parcel; South Eastern Shipping of Miami bought it; Ganshyam Mahase and Mahase Lumber Yard of Great Diamond were contracted to ship it out; the High Court found no jurisdiction in September 2026, citing the arbitration clause; arbitration had not begun a month later. - **Panel note:** no spill confirmed. ## Frequently Asked Questions What is on the barge in the Demerara River? Waste oil. The court documents put the quantity at 8,080 barrels, against the Civil Defence Commission's "approximately 8,000". The documents trace the sale to WGS Enterprises of St Lucia; what WGS bought it from is not in the published account. Who owns the barge? The court documents name Ganshyam Mahase and Mahase Lumber Yard of Great Diamond, East Bank Demerara. The Civil Defence Commission has not disclosed the owner, and one outlet reports a different, unconfirmed attribution to a company at Coverden. How long has it been there? Since January 2026, according to the Miami company's court filings, which state the barge was moved to the owner's own premises without its knowledge. What did the High Court decide in September? It dismissed the barge owner's application, citing the arbitration clause in the agreement and holding that it had no jurisdiction. It referred the parties to arbitration. The dismissal decided nothing about the merits. Has the arbitration started? News Source Guyana reported on 21 October that one month after the ruling, arbitration had yet to begin. Has there been a spill? No spill has been confirmed. Containment booms were deployed as a precautionary measure and the Civil Defence Commission says the vessel is upright with its cargo intact and the situation under control. Which agencies are involved? The Civil Defence Commission is leading, with the Maritime Administration Department, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Guyana Energy Agency, the Guyana Fire Service, the Ministry of Agriculture's Fisheries Department and the Guyana Defence Force Coast Guard.