CHALLENGES OF CONTINGENCY PLANNING IN A SMALLISLAND DEVELOPING STATE - TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO

摘要

The oil industry is the engine of the economy of Trinidad and Tobago, with a productionof around 125,000 barrels of oil a day, of which 55,000 come from offshore on the eastcoast and 31,000 from the west coast of Trinidad. Two refineries with total capacity of230,000 barrels a day are located along the west coast of Trinidad.For these local oil operations an average of 50 and 800 tankers, annually, visitports on the east and west coast, respectively. The daily crude tonnage of tankers passingthrough the south Caribbean now exceeds 2 million metric tons (t). Tanker traffic,therefore, creates a major risk for oil spills and complicates contingency planning inTrinidad and Tobago, and the southern Caribbean.Small island states with serious deficiencies in financing their contingency planscan utilize tiered emergency response schemes to offset the obvious weaknesses in theirresponse capabilities; but unless multilateral funding is available, the benefits of tieredresponse would be limited. Assistance to small island states to help ratify the IMOconventions and protocols remains the best form of insurance against all oil spill perils.