Little risk of environmental fallout - PCJ

John McKenna, Tullow Oil's operations and external affairs manager for South America and the Caribbean, on Friday sought to allay concerns about any potentially negative impact on the marine environment as well as livelihoods of fishers during the seismic survey. He was a member of the tour party aboard the Polarcus Adira, a state-of-the-art seismic vessel now in Jamaican waters preparing to carry out the necessary three-dimensional (3-D) survey to inform the direction of Petroleum Corporation of Jamaica's (PCJ) oil and gas exploration programme.

The survey is a part of the 2014 production sharing agreement between the PCJ and Tullow Oil as they continue the search for oil and gas offshore Jamaica and is a follow-up to the two rounds of two-dimensional surveys conducted in 2016 and 2017.

In a press release issued on Friday, the PCJ explained that the 3-D seismic survey, a first of its kind for Jamaica, is a sound-based method used to generated detailed 3-D images of the various rock layers beneath the ocean floor.

With the PCJ and National Environment and Planning Agency stipulating that oil exploration activity be conducted under conditions that are minimally invasive to the marine environment and populations, Tullow Oil has taken steps to ensure this, according to McKenna.

"We have done a large amount of stakeholder engagement and messaging along all the beaches and with the main stakeholders here to try and ensure that they avoid the area during the period that we will be in operation ...but that doesn't mean that they will have to avoid the whole area.

"We have a system set up with numbers they can call, and they will be told, say, 48 hours in advance where the vessel is likely to be. So, we hope that the efforts that we have put in place will ensure that this survey goes without (affecting) very much fishing activity because it's a very large amount of equipment and material in the water being towed behind the vessel."

On the question of whether the survey will affect marine life, the PCJ, in its release, explained that the survey vessel will be slow-moving and will use internationally approved 'soft-start methods', where the sound is slowly built up in order to prevent fish from being driven from their habitat.

"This method will not cause any harm to marine life and is similar to shouting under water. Additionally, seismic surveys cannot begin when some, particularly endangered species of marine mammals, are near the sound source."

In keeping with international best practices, marine mammal observers, who have the authority to halt a seismic survey if they believe a marine mammal is in danger, will be on-board "at all times" to monitor the progress of the survey and the presence (or lack thereof) of all endangered and migrating species, the PCJ assures.