Unions are warnings of an imminent environmental disaster off Venezuela as a PDVSA-operated floating storage and offloading (FSO) vessel takes on water.
The 208,000-dwt Nabarima (built 2005) has 1.3m barrels of crude on board in the Gulf of Paria.
Eudis Girot, an oil workers' union leader, posted photos from inside the vessel on Twitter (see below).
He said the unit is "about to spill and cause a terrible global catastrophe".
And he added: "Very poor conditions and deep deterioration; lower deck and equipment three metres under water."
The Petroguia website said the oil had been stored on board for more than a year and a half.
State oil company PDVSA was reportedly due to deliver the crude to refiner Citgo but US sanctions had prevented shipments.
PDVSA has not commented.
"Let's save nature and avoid a global ecological catastrophe due to the Nabarima oil barrels that could spill affecting the Gulf of Paria, the Orinoco delta, the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean," said Girot, a director of the Unitary Federation of Petroleum Workers of Venezuela.
Parallels with Yemen case
The case has sinister echoes of another disaster awaiting the people of Yemen, where the deteriorating 407,000-dwt FSO Safer (built 1976) that has been taking on water in the Red Sea.
The United Nations (UN) is trying to inspect the unit.
If nothing is done, the UN said it envisages one of two potential scenarios for the vessel which is anchored off Ras Isa.
"Corrosion and lack of maintenance of the FSO unit for an extended period of time can lead to leakage of some of the oil into the sea," an official said in July.
"An explosion and a fire on board the FSO unit, caused by accidental ignition of gas accumulated in the cargo tanks, results in the catastrophic scenario with massive leakage of most or all of the oil into the sea."
