Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

To­ba­go fish­er­men are de­mand­ing con­sul­ta­tion be­fore any drilling takes place in To­ba­go wa­ters.

Amer­i­can com­pa­ny EOG Re­sources will be­gin ex­plorato­ry drilling in south­west To­ba­go from mid-Oc­to­ber to de­ter­mine the hy­dro­car­bon po­ten­tial in the area.

Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine has ex­pressed mea­sured ex­cite­ment about the de­vel­op­ment, not­ing that the drilling site is just 22 kilo­me­tres off the is­land.

“That does not mean that we have hy­dro­car­bons ready for com­mer­cial gain. It sim­ply means we are go­ing to see what is there, to de­ter­mine what can be done about it,” Au­gus­tine said in a Face­book post on Tues­day.

He re­vealed that on­ly one well will be ex­plored, us­ing a mo­bile rig at the site.

The Par­latu­vi­er/L’Anse Four­mi/Spey­side rep­re­sen­ta­tive said if hy­dro­car­bons are found, the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) has three to four years to pre­pare it­self to max­imise the ben­e­fits.

The To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty (TPP) leader has ad­vo­cat­ed for To­ba­go’s mar­itime bound­aries to be legal­ly de­fined so the as­sem­bly can gen­er­ate di­rect rev­enue from en­er­gy re­sources with­in its space.

The THA is al­so push­ing for greater au­ton­o­my from Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment, which would re­quire com­pa­nies and in­di­vid­u­als op­er­at­ing on the is­land to pay tax­es, fees, du­ties and levies to the THA.

Au­gus­tine said yes­ter­day, “To­ba­go con­tin­ues to con­tribute mean­ing­ful­ly to the na­tion­al cof­fers.

“The To­ba­go Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency (TEMA) has al­so been en­gaged to en­sure an ef­fi­cient re­sponse in the event of a mar­itime ac­ci­dent.”

He re­vealed that var­i­ous stake­hold­ers were con­sult­ed last year, in­clud­ing fish­er­folk, tourism rep­re­sen­ta­tives, en­vi­ron­men­tal­ists and gov­ern­ment agen­cies.

Au­gus­tine said a meet­ing was held with EOG rep­re­sen­ta­tives on Mon­day, and the com­pa­ny was asked to re-en­gage fish­er­folk to en­sure stake­hold­ers are kept abreast of its ac­tiv­i­ties.

“So they can go over what the im­pli­ca­tions are for your in­dus­try. At the end of the day, we want every­body to win when EOG comes here in our wa­ters,” he said.

How­ev­er, Cur­tis Dou­glas, pres­i­dent of the All To­ba­go Fish­er­folk As­so­ci­a­tion (AT­FA), said his mem­bers are very con­cerned about the de­vel­op­ment.

“We have some se­ri­ous con­cerns that need to be ad­dressed. There are cer­tain things that have to be met be­fore we could en­gage or even think about hav­ing any drilling,” he said.

Asked about fish­er­folk’s in­ter­est in the lo­ca­tion, Dou­glas said, “The south­west and south­east are ma­jor tra­di­tion­al fish­ing ar­eas for us, where our fish­er­men ply our liv­ing and mind our fam­i­lies. Where they’re drilling, there is tra­di­tion­al fish­ing grounds.”

Guardian Me­dia sent ques­tions to EOG Re­sources about its con­sul­ta­tion with en­vi­ron­men­tal and fish­ing stake­hold­ers, but the com­pa­ny had not re­spond­ed up to press time.