Dr Lee Hunt, president, International Association of Drilling Contractors (IADC), supports the Government's plans to set up a committee to deal with possible oil spills in the country. Last week at the Hyatt Regency Trinidad hotel in Port-of-Spain, the IADC, an organisation which Lee said has most of the world's drillers in its membership, held its environmental conference and exhibition that focused on setting standards, safety and the environment in the drilling industry. Some of the companies involved in the conference were Transocean-the world's largest offshore drilling company-Maersk Drilling and Rowan Companies Inc. This conference came after a year the major oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in April 2010. Speaking to the Business Guardian last Thursday at the conference, Lee called the Government's plans a step in the right direction. "I was very pleased to hear T&T's Minister of Energy Minister, Carolyn Seepersad-Bachan, during her opening speech today talk about the creation of an oil company collaborative effort to establish such response capabilities, which she called a level two incident. This is not only a step in the right direction; it's a necessary step," said Hunt.
During her address, Seepersad-Bachan said on coming to office in May 2010, Cabinet appointed the National Hydrocarbon and Chemical Spill Contingency Plan Committee, which has advanced a plan that is currently being considered for confirmation. She said: "At the current time, we are also moving towards the establishment of a Second Tier Response Organisation, which will support our efforts to provide strong contingency measures in the event of a disaster. "And I want to underscore here that this Second Tier Response Organisation will be the first of its kind for us and will be established through consultation and with firm, sound governance structures in place," she said. Lee said because T&T is a regional energy producer, it was an obvious choice for the site of this year's conference. "We had a developing interest even prior to Macondo (oil spill off the Gulf of Mexico in 2010) in promoting a focus on offshore safety in the wider and greater Caribbean region, and T&T being one of the more prolific oil states in the region, was the logical choice.
"A year ago when we began to have aspirations to have Cuban nationals participate, it was vital that we had a location outside the United States so they could attend, so Trinidad remain our location of choice. So T&T is an open area to all the participants for the conference," he said. Lee's aim at the end of the two-day conference was to raise the level of awareness and share information regarding the duties and responsibilities of the industry as an environmental steward engaging in commercial operations. "It is to bring information from the scientific, academic and environmental communities to the drilling companies to complement their knowledge and awareness to which we are working. Likewise, we share back with those people the commitments and technologies that the drilling companies have and environmentally-friendly drilling."
Industry errors
Hunt said the drilling industry may have made mistakes in the lead up to the Gulf of Mexico spill and now it is time to correct those errors."It's fair to say that the critics from the US government and other quarters who said the industry put too much faith and reliance on prevention and, was thus unprepared for consequences, has an absolute ring of fact to it. "One of the things we are trying to do now is raise the level of information, knowledge and commitment to the necessary necessity for disaster planning, and not just planning, but disasters resources," he said. In the US two major oil spills, response organisations have been formed: Drill Containment Association, which was created by the major oil companies, and Helix Energy Solutions Group, which was represented at the conference. "In the US, it is now required before you get a permit to drill, you show that you have access to the resources of one of these two companies to contain a spill, so that within 72 hours you can have equipment on site in tapping the wells and stemming the flow, injecting and deploying containment resources. Outside the US, Gulf of Mexico, there is a similar corporate structure, which has also been discussed at this conference," Hunt said.
Gulf of Mexico pivotal
Lee admits that the spill in the Gulf of Mexico last year was pivotal for the industry. "The industry often points to its safety record prior to Macondo. It's a good record, but like Macondo, pretty much sets the clock back to zero. We have to start over again. And we are in what we call 'post-Macondo,' we call it the new world of drilling. That new world is going to consist of greater caution, greater preparation and greater efforts at the assessment of hazards and the planning of mitigation and all of these will be pre-conditions to operations," he said.
About the IADC
Hung called the IADC an organisation with an international reach. "It is a trade organisation that represents a membership primarily that own and operate drilling rigs, both on and offshore. Approximately 90 per cent of the drilling rigs operating in the world belong to the member companies of the IADC. It's global. "We promote technology, development and advance safety best practices. We work with regulatory and legislative authorities globally to help generate best legislation and best practices. We also run conferences and provide educational material. We are a very broad global origination," he said. IADC works with governments worldwide. "We work very closely with governments around the world and we work very productively with them. I was very pleased to hear of the T&T's minister's vision about expanded drilling in T&T and her vision for environmental protection and technologically safe practices and planning for disasters and containment." The IADC is headquartered in Houston, Texas, and has offices in Washington, DC, the Netherlands, Dubai and in Bangkok.
Dr Lee Hung's bio
Dr Lee Hunt serves as the chief executive of IADC, responsible for managing IADC's worldwide operations. Before being named president in 1990, his prior association positions included manager for state government affairs, environmental affairs and human resources. Hunt holds a doctorate in political science from Northwestern University and received his law degree from South Texas College of Law.