Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor-News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

From the class­rooms of UTT, Christy Nand­lal jumped in­to the in­ter­na­tion­al world of oil and gas. Some peo­ple creep lo­cal­ly be­fore they take the leap in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, but Nand­lal took a deep breath and went for it.

For the last 19 years, she's had a ca­reer as a chief field geo­physi­cist sup­port­ing geo­phys­i­cal op­er­a­tions glob­al­ly in ma­rine seis­mic ex­plo­ration as well as ge­ot­ech­ni­cal cam­paigns in the oil, gas, and wind farm in­dus­try.

It's a ma­jor ac­com­plish­ment for a woman with small-town roots in Princes Town who went to St Stephen's Col­lege.

Nand­lal works in the oil and gas and wind farm in­dus­tries, man­ag­ing the pro­cess­ing of ge­o­log­i­cal and geo­phys­i­cal da­ta col­lect­ed from the seabed and un­der­ground lay­ers. This da­ta is analysed to iden­ti­fy key fea­tures and as­sess the suit­abil­i­ty of lo­ca­tions for drilling, as well as for in­stalling struc­tures such as wind tur­bines, oil rigs, and pro­duc­tion fa­cil­i­ties.

She was the youngest chief field geo­physi­cist in the West­ernGe­co fleet at age 27. Some­times, ar­eas al­so have to be cleared of such equip­ment, and that's where they come in. "Ba­si­cal­ly, it's like a snap­shot of the earth," Nand­lal said.

She grad­u­at­ed from UTT with a tech­ni­cian’s diplo­ma in Pe­tro­le­um En­gi­neer­ing Tech­nol­o­gy and start­ed her ca­reer as an ob­serv­er (ac­qui­si­tion spe­cial­ist) at the age of 20 in West­ernGe­co—a geo­phys­i­cal ser­vices com­pa­ny head­quar­tered in Lon­don.

What many would con­sid­er suc­cess was ac­tu­al­ly Nand­lal's great­est chal­lenge—and it wasn’t just be­cause he was work­ing in a male-dom­i­nat­ed in­dus­try.

"I al­ways say I had to over­come what is con­sid­ered a triple threat, which is be­ing from a third world coun­try in the Caribbean, be­ing a woman in the field, and be­ing coloured," Nan­dal told WE Mag­a­zine this past week.

That wasn't all. She would en­counter prej­u­dice and racism in her jour­ney. Nand­lal said those jobs were dom­i­nat­ed by Eu­ro­pean and Amer­i­can white men. Asian and African peo­ple, as well as those who looked like her, would en­counter hur­dles to func­tion and achieve pro­mo­tion. They would have to take their griev­ances to the HR de­part­ment to seek jus­tice.

She re­called, "It was strange for me be­cause liv­ing in Trinidad you do see a lit­tle racism, but it is not on the same lev­el as what you get in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. It's bad. It's nasty. They lit­er­al­ly tell you to your face that you are not good enough."

Nand­lal said in such cir­cum­stances you have to hold your po­si­tion and keep a strong face "be­cause if you let them get to you, you will get frus­trat­ed and quit, which is what they want."

How­ev­er, the chal­lenges she and her coloured col­leagues en­coun­tered would seem triv­ial com­pared to what was com­ing. In her third year on the job, Nand­lal ex­pe­ri­enced first-hand the true risks of the in­dus­try.

One day, work­ing in the Gulf of Mex­i­co, they lost a man at sea. He fell over­board, couldn't swim, and the life jack­et failed to in­flate. Nand­lal was the last per­son to see him. She tried her best to keep her eyes on him in the wa­ter but even­tu­al­ly lost sight, and he was swal­lowed up by the sea.

For days they searched for his body, but it was nev­er found. It was such a trau­mat­ic ex­pe­ri­ence that peo­ple on the ves­sel quit their jobs. The in­ci­dent taught her a les­son she would car­ry with her for the rest of her ca­reer. Nand­lal ex­plained, "It dawned on us at that time how risky the job is, and peo­ple take for grant­ed a lot of the time the risk of be­ing in the job that we are in. It's very, very high, but be­cause of all the safe­ty mea­sures and the drills, peo­ple get com­fort­able, but you could have all the safe­ty prac­tices in place, all the rules and reg­u­la­tions; some­times there is that lit­tle hole in the safe­ty net that some­thing could al­ways slip through."

Through prayer and coun­selling, Nand­lal would make it through that hor­ri­fy­ing ex­pe­ri­ence, but the re­ports and in­ves­ti­ga­tions in the months that fol­lowed didn't make it easy to move on.

In De­cem­ber, when Rig 110 par­tial­ly col­lapsed in the Gulf of Paria and Pe­te Phillip went miss­ing, Nand­lal was deeply emo­tion­al up­on hear­ing the news. "Even though I work on ves­sels, it's still an ex­ten­sion of the in­dus­try. I felt dis­ap­point­ed, and I felt ashamed," Nand­lal told WE Mag­a­zine.

Nand­lal con­tin­ues to ad­vance aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly. Re­cent­ly, she com­plet­ed her Mas­ter's in Oil and Gas in En­er­gy Man­age­ment at the Uni­ver­si­ty of East Lon­don. Her ca­reer has tak­en her to work in nu­mer­ous ar­eas, such as the Gulf of Mex­i­co in the USA, Cam­pos Basin in Brazil, Sarawak in Malaysia, the West Coast in Aus­tralia, Kara Sea in Rus­sia, Campeche in Mex­i­co, the EC­MA Panora­ma Shell Cam­paign in the Gulf of Paria for De­N­o­vo’s Zan­dolie Project in Trinidad, the North Sea in the UK, Nor­way, Ger­many, Nether­lands, and Bel­gium.

Last year, Nand­lal start­ed a schol­ar­ship pro­gramme with her al­ma mater where three Form Three stu­dents of St Stephen's Col­lege would be award­ed fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance. She ex­plained, "I no­ticed over the years there are chil­dren from dis­en­fran­chised homes, or their par­ents are not get­ting reg­u­lar work, and they have mul­ti­ple sib­lings to send to school, and they are just not able to make ends meet, and they are bril­liant chil­dren, but they are just not able to go to school and at least write CXC."

Af­ter the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, Nand­lal no­ticed that it had be­come in­creas­ing­ly com­mon for stu­dents to drop out of school af­ter Form Three. She re­spond­ed by es­tab­lish­ing a schol­ar­ship to fi­nan­cial­ly sup­port three Form Three stu­dents each aca­d­e­m­ic year, help­ing them con­tin­ue their ed­u­ca­tion through to Form Five and en­abling them to sit the CXC ex­ams.

"It is not nec­es­sar­i­ly for the bright­est child but for a child in need who is do­ing well and needs the fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance," she added.

Part of her push is to pro­mote women in sci­ence, tech­nol­o­gy, en­gi­neer­ing, and math­e­mat­ics (STEM).

Nand­lal is en­cour­ag­ing the youth of this na­tion to stay per­sis­tent and con­sis­tent in their ef­forts. He em­pha­sis­es that while you might not al­ways be the best, main­tain­ing a steady ap­proach and putting in con­sis­tent work will ul­ti­mate­ly lead to suc­cess.