Yvonne?Ba­boolal

Trade and In­dus­try Min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath and of­fi­cials from In­vestTT yes­ter­day as­sured that the ar­rival of four Transocean In­ter­na­tion­al drill ships in­to T&T wa­ters will not pose an en­vi­ron­men­tal threat.Transocean, the com­pa­ny re­spon­si­ble for the large oil spill in the Gulf of Mex­i­co in 2010, has been grant­ed per­mis­sion to park the drill ships in T&T wa­ters af­ter re­port­ed­ly be­ing turned away by Unit­ed States and Cu­ra­cao au­thor­i­ties.

Bharath and In­vestTT vice-pres­i­dent, Shya­mal Chan­dra­daths­ingh, who both con­firmed to the T&T Guardian ap­proval was giv­en for the moor­ing of the drill ships in T&T wa­ters, said the move will bring jobs and eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits to this coun­try.Con­cern had been raised about the ar­rival of the ves­sels by a source who said: "Park­ing them in T&T wa­ters pos­es an en­vi­ron­men­tal risk. Our wa­ters are al­ready pol­lut­ed with derelict ships dumped here by US off­shore com­pa­ny, Tide­wa­ter Ma­rine."

The source claimed di­rec­tor of Mar­itime Ser­vices Bev­er­ly Phillip did not ini­tial­ly grant ap­proval to Transocean, an in­ter­na­tion­al drill ship­ping com­pa­ny with of­fices in the US and Switzer­land, but was in­flu­enced by Bharath and Trans­port Min­is­ter Stephen Cadiz to re­verse her de­ci­sion.The source said busi­ness­man, Philip Buxo, for­mer T&T high com­mis­sion­er to Cana­da, was the one who got Bharath and Cadiz to se­cure ap­proval for Transocean. Buxo re­port­ed­ly owns 50 per cent of an off­shore lo­gis­tics com­pa­ny, Pe­ter­son In­te­grat­ed Lo­gis­tics.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day on the mat­ter, Bharath said Buxo did in­di­cate that Transocean was in­ter­est­ed in park­ing some drilling ships in T&T wa­ters."I un­der­stand they want­ed to move their op­er­a­tions," he said.Bharath said the com­pa­ny will pay the Gov­ern­ment for a lease rental of seabed space and has promised to hire na­tion­als when the oil sec­tor is re­sus­ci­tat­ed with high­er prices.

"When that hap­pens, they would al­ready be here to start drilling. It was on that ba­sis that I had no ob­jec­tion. That's all there is to it, as far as I'm aware," he said.Bharath said he was not aware that Transocean was re­fused ap­proval, re­port­ed­ly in writ­ing, by Philip."No one men­tioned it to me," he said. He added that per­mis­sion to rent seabed space is grant­ed by the Com­mis­sion­er of State Lands. Bharath said he al­so did not un­der­stand the Trans­port Min­is­ter's (Cadiz) in­volve­ment in the mat­ter.

He re­called that when he was Min­is­ter of Land and Ma­rine Re­sources, he grant­ed a com­pa­ny called Old­en­dorf per­mis­sion to park in T&T wa­ters."They had a huge tanker that was un­able to go to Brazil for iron ore and it was moored sev­en miles off the coast."They had small ships bring­ing the iron ore and cranes plant­ed on the seabed took the ma­te­r­i­al from them and trans­ferred it to the big tanker. It then went to Chi­na."

Bharath said 100 Trinida­di­an na­tion­als got work with Old­en­dorf."I sus­pect the same thing is hap­pen­ing here. Buxo promised there would be jobs for the lo­cal oil rig sec­tor," he told the T&T Guardian.As for claims that the drill ships were "ob­so­lete," the min­is­ter said: "I as­sumed they were in good or­der. I be­lieve due dili­gence would have been done."

Ships ac­tive, in ser­vice

Chan­dra­daths­ingh said stan­dard mon­i­tor­ing pro­ce­dures were done by the Mar­itime Ser­vices Di­vi­sion and, as far as he knew, the drill ships were "not at all" out­dat­ed."We would have done our due dili­gence and found the ships fair­ly new. They are all ac­tive and in ser­vice."Chan­dra­daths­ingh ex­plained how In­vestTT came in­to con­tact with Transocean.

"Dur­ing the past few months, be­cause of the de­cline in oil prices, they asked to cold stack in T&T wa­ters. They were work­ing in the Gulf of Mex­i­co and their work fin­ished there."They are seek­ing to get seabed leas­es for around 45 years for which they would pay the Gov­ern­ment a rent. They have al­so promised to hire lo­cals to pa­trol the ships and per­form oth­er ser­vices while they are parked."

Chan­dra­daths­ingh said Transocean said it would be look­ing for work in the re­gion, in­clud­ing in T&T, Guyana and Suri­nam and will be set­ting up a T&T of­fice.He said "about four or five" ships are ex­pect­ed to ar­rive in T&T with­in the next 20 days and will have to ad­here to the stan­dard pro­ce­dure for cold stack­ing.

Buxo, who was spend­ing Fa­ther's Day yes­ter­day on the beach with his fam­i­ly, said his on­ly role in the whole mat­ter was to in­tro­duce Transocean to In­vestTT."When some­one says they want to in­vest in this coun­try, that's where you send them. I sug­gest­ed to Transocean they get in touch with In­vestTT. That is my role."

Buxo said he be­lieves it was a good in­vest­ment op­por­tu­ni­ty for T&T.Calls to Cadiz' cell phone yes­ter­day were not an­swered.

About Transocean

Transocean Deep­wa­ter Inc was or­dered to pay the sec­ond largest en­vi­ron­men­tal fine in US his­to­ry, $400 mil­lion, for its role in the 2010 Deep­wa­ter Hori­zon ex­plo­sion and spill in the Gulf of Mex­i­co.The com­pa­ny plead­ed guilty to vi­o­lat­ing the Clean Wa­ter Act which led to the oil spill.

In the in­ci­dent, 11 work­ers were killed when a Transocean oil rig ex­plod­ed and 4.9 mil­lion bar­rels spilled in­to the Gulf.

A Transocean In­ter­na­tion­al web­site stat­ed it was a lead­ing in­ter­na­tion­al provider of off­shore con­tract drilling ser­vices for en­er­gy com­pa­nies.It owns and op­er­ates the world's most ver­sa­tile fleets, with a par­tic­u­lar fo­cus on deep­wa­ter and harsh-en­vi­ron­ment drilling, the web­site said. "Our fleet of 65 mo­bile off­shore drilling units in­cludes the world's largest fleet of high-spec­i­fi­ca­tion rigs con­sist­ing of ul­tra-deep­wa­ter, deep­wa­ter and pre­mi­um jack­up rigs.

"In ad­di­tion, we have sev­en ul­tra-deep­wa­ter drill ships and five high-spec­i­fi­ca­tion jack­ups un­der con­struc­tion."Im­ages on the web­site showed ships that looked in good con­di­tion.