The long-term eco­nom­ic im­pact of the oil spill in To­ba­go could be pro­found, as it could lead to the deep­en­ing of the is­land’s de­pen­dence on Trinidad, de­pend­ing on the ex­tent of the con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of the is­land’s ecosys­tem, To­ba­go econ­o­mist, Dr Vanus James said on Fri­day.

He said the oil spill could have a short-term im­pact on To­ba­go’s tourism as the sto­ry of the oil spill has been all over the in­ter­na­tion­al me­dia.

The im­pact on the is­land’s tourism prod­uct could be long term de­pend­ing on where and how much dam­age is done to To­ba­go’s beach­es, reefs, man­groves and dive spots.

“To­bag­o­ni­ans must re­alise that the is­land is a gov­ern­ment-dom­i­nat­ed econ­o­my and not a tourism econ­o­my. So there is a cer­tain amount of in­su­la­tion of the econ­o­my from the im­pact of the oil spill, as the trans­fers from Trinidad to To­ba­go are not like­ly to be im­pact­ed by the oil spill,” said James.

De­pend­ing on the im­pact of the con­t­a­m­i­na­tion, peo­ple could lose their jobs in the tourism sec­tor and may be dri­ven to work for the gov­ern­ment on the is­land.

“This could lead to an eter­ni­ty of de­pen­dence by To­ba­go on Trinidad,” James said, point­ing out that by his cal­cu­la­tion, em­ploy­ment by the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly is 20 per cent less pro­duc­tive than the av­er­age em­ploy­ment in T&T.

Re­tired econ­o­mist Gre­go­ry McGuire, chair­man of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Ex­trac­tive In­dus­tries Trans­paren­cy Ini­tia­tive (TTEITI), said the oil spill will have se­ri­ous im­pli­ca­tions for fish­er­folk and the tourism in­dus­try if the clean-up is not thor­ough­ly and speed­i­ly done.

McGuire said the en­tire ma­rine en­vi­ron­ment, and the eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ties it sup­ports, can be neg­a­tive­ly im­pact­ed to vary­ing de­grees.

“The ob­vi­ous im­pacts will be on the tourism sec­tor as East­er is one of the peak pe­ri­ods for do­mes­tic tourism! Ad­di­tion­al­ly, fish­er­folk, tour boats, and all those in­volved in mar­itime ac­tiv­i­ty can feel the pain of the dis­rup­tion caused by this spill.  

“There may al­so be long-term im­pacts as well as the fish stock around To­ba­go wa­ters may be con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed, lead­ing to con­sumers be­com­ing hes­i­tant about eat­ing fish,” he ex­plained.

These risks, he said, how­ev­er, can be mit­i­gat­ed by a speedy and thor­ough cleanup process.

Dr James said the fish­er­folk will be great­ly im­pact­ed and the de­mand for fresh fish will fall sharply.

“A lot of peo­ple are al­ready say­ing they would not be buy­ing fish any­time soon. So that will af­fect them, and they are al­ready op­er­at­ing in an in­dus­try that was al­ready dam­aged, from 2022 when it de­clined by about 0.4 per cent. So they are go­ing to be tak­ing a fur­ther beat­ing in 2024. Many of the fish­er­folk will have to look else­where for steady in­come,” James out­lined.

An­oth­er point he ad­dressed was that tourism is a tiny share of To­ba­go’s econ­o­my as the is­land runs a gov­ern­ment econ­o­my and that is where the spend­ing pow­er comes from.

“To­ba­go econ­o­my is large­ly in­de­pen­dent of the short-term dam­ag­ing ef­fects and the long-term ef­fects are go­ing to be felt by the fish­er­folk and the tourism ser­vices sec­tor,” the econ­o­mist added.

Ear­ly de­tec­tion  

McGuire, said ear­ly-de­tec­tion radar sys­tems will help to speed up re­me­di­a­tion ef­forts to deal with spills when­ev­er they oc­cur in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Giv­ing his thoughts on the oil spill which be­gan on Feb­ru­ary 7, he said his un­der­stand­ing is that the Min­istry of En­er­gy has plans for pur­chas­ing and in­stalling such sys­tems and he be­lieves this is a step in the right di­rec­tion, to de­tect the spills ear­ly.

He told Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian that this coun­try has a well-doc­u­ment­ed sys­tem for treat­ing oil spills, in­clud­ing the cost of clean-ups, and in the event of an oil spill, the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) cal­cu­lates the val­ue of the en­vi­ron­men­tal dam­age, cleanup and re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion.

 McGuire not­ed that this cost is to be borne by the li­able com­pa­ny, but in this case, the own­er of the cap­sized ves­sel named “Gulf­stream,” is yet to be iden­ti­fied.

“Un­der the Pe­tro­le­um Act, the up­stream com­pa­nies are re­quired to place funds in an es­crow ac­count to cov­er costs in the event of an oil spill. The lat­est TTEITI re­port in­di­cates that the sum of US$94 mil­lion is cur­rent­ly held in an es­crow ac­count at the Cen­tral Bank to deal with oil spills. The TTEITI re­port al­so pro­vides da­ta on the num­ber of oil spills oc­cur­ring in the coun­try in any fis­cal year,” the chair­man de­tailed.  

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, he said in this case avail­able in­for­ma­tion sug­gests that this is not a lo­cal com­pa­ny nor a for­eign com­pa­ny op­er­at­ing in TT.

No im­pact on NGC

Try­ing to as­cer­tain what im­pacts the oil spill may have had on in­fra­struc­ture, the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC), which con­struct­ed a sub-sea nat­ur­al gas pipeline to the south­east of To­ba­go , which comes ashore at the Cove In­dus­tri­al Es­tate, said its in­fra­struc­ture has not been im­pact­ed.

“The pipeline is 20-30 me­tres un­der­neath the seabed in that area and there­fore not sus­cep­ti­ble to any ex­ter­nal im­pact from sink­ing ob­jects,” the com­pa­ny told Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian  

Asked if NGC has been called up­on to as­sist in the oil spill mit­i­ga­tion ef­forts, the gas com­pa­ny said: “No it has not been en­gaged to as­sist at this time, but will de­liv­er sup­port should it be re­quired.”

Busi­ness­es not af­fect­ed

Chair­man of the To­ba­go Di­vi­sion of To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce, Cur­tis Williams, said the mem­bers in­di­cat­ed that their busi­ness­es were not im­pact­ed, as the oil spill was fo­cussed on the At­lantic side of the is­land.

Williams point­ed out that the Coast Guard sta­tion in To­ba­go needs to be bet­ter equipped to re­spond to emer­gen­cies prompt­ly.  

“The base here is poor­ly main­tained and equipped….They don’t even have a flag­pole to fly the na­tion­al flag and the Coast Guard en­sign. The build­ing is in a de­plorable state…. you can take a pic­ture of it your­self and ver­i­fy my feed­back. To­ba­go Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency did the best they could with lim­it­ed re­sources,” he men­tioned.

Com­bined ef­forts

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, last Fri­day said En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young and Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port Ro­han Sinanan of­fered con­tin­ued sup­port and ex­per­tise from their Min­istries to the THA and TEMA.  

Row­ley said the Min­istry of En­er­gy per­son­nel were al­so present and have been par­tic­i­pat­ing in and pro­vid­ing ex­per­tise in the re­sponse ex­er­cise which is un­der­way.

He not­ed that Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed sent re­sources to To­ba­go in­clud­ing per­son­nel and equip­ment, to as­sist in the re­sponse to this on­go­ing sit­u­a­tion.  

The Prime Min­is­ter said the Min­istry of En­er­gy ini­tial­ly re­quest­ed as­sis­tance from Wood­side En­er­gy and their ap­proval of the use of a pri­vate ser­vice con­trac­tor (Kaizen En­vi­ron­men­tal Ser­vices Trinidad Ltd) that Wood­side En­er­gy had in To­ba­go with the ex­per­tise to deal with con­tain­ment and clean-up op­er­a­tions.

“All the cor­re­spon­dence pro­vides a com­pre­hen­sive and ac­cu­rate ac­count of all that has tak­en place in a mul­ti-dis­ci­pli­nary, mul­ti-sec­toral team ap­proach, and should help to dis­pel some re­cent in­ac­cu­rate, ir­re­spon­si­ble, and mis­lead­ing com­men­tary that there has been an at­tempt to con­ceal in­for­ma­tion from the pub­lic, par­tic­u­lar­ly the Chief Sec­re­tary of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly, on the mat­ter of the oil spill. There has been no hint of any cov­er-up,” Row­ley stressed.