Talks today on costly Penrod tug dispute

Press, 3 October 1983, Page 1

Talks today on costly Penrod tug dispute

PA Invercargill An effort to solve an expensive waterside handling dispute which threatens to hinder oil exploration in the Great South Basin will be made today.

The dispute is Said to be costing $300,000 a day. Talks will take place before an industrial conciljiator, Mr Maurice Teen, in Bluff today. The dispute developed on Friday evening within 12 hours of the giant Penrod drilling rig’s reaching the area and anchoring near Stewart Island. It involves an insistence by Harbour Board Employees’ Union members at Bluff to handle the mooring of ships exempted from using pilots when going to and from the port.

The union says it does not want the work handled by

anyone other than its members and has declared one of the rig’s two support ships in port black. The other support ship cleared port before the ban was implemented. The support ships are required to tow the rig 160 km south to its drilling site. The general operations manager of Placid Oil, Ltd, New Zealand, Mr Raymond Huffman, said on Friday that the company was extremely disappointed about encountering “serious industrial problems” before the rig was even on location. He said the industrial action had immobilised a supply

ship, delayed operations, and increased the costs of the project. “From my experience in this industry, I am sure that other operators who are contemplating similar projects will be watching these developments closely,” he said.

Placid Oil is the drilling operator for the consortium of companies led by Hunt International Petroleum and including Southern Petroleum N.L., which plans to drill the Tikkitak well in the Great South Basin during the next two months. The Tikkitak well is the first of more than six wells to be drilled in the southern basin and off the Taranaki coast during the next 12 months.

The national secretary of the Harbour Board Employees’ Union, Mr Ralph Gerdelan, said in Wellington that the union had done “everything reasonable and practicable” over the last two weeks in an effort to talk with Mr Huffman.

“All they have done (Hunt) is laid demands and said they would go to another part of the country if they were not happy,” he said. Jobs were at stake, he said.

The general manager of the Southland Harbour Board, Mr Neil Cantrick, said that the union was challenging traditional practice at Bluff. He said Placid Oil had been granted the exemption on September 27 and similar exemptions during earlier drilling in the Great South Basin had not been challenged by the union.