The Port of Tenerife Accelerates Its Decline in Favor of Las Palmas

The withdrawal of Ensco from the port of Santa Cruz de Tenerife in favor of the port of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, where another drilling ship called “Ensco DS-4” has arrived this week, means that the Port Authority will lose about eight million euros annually in its coffers, which will now benefit the Port Authority of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, where Ensco, now controlled by Valaris, has decided to concentrate its entire fleet in this area of the Atlantic.

These are five ships that pay an average of 4,000 euros daily for their stay at the port of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, clearly strengthening its leadership as the main base and center for naval repairs, to the detriment of the port of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, which is increasingly struggling due to the loss of opportunities. This amount must be added to the sum of services that benefit from the presence of such ships and the number of people involved.

Last March, Ensco proposed an agreement to the Port Authority of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, which was supposedly declined by the public entity “for a commercial strategy,” the scope and content of which are unknown, despite the commitment and effort of the entity's president, Pedro Suárez López de Vergara, to ensure that Ensco would not leave the Tenerife port, which ultimately has not been the case.

There are about a hundred people, mostly qualified technicians, whose professional lives hang by a thread and depend on new projects appearing, as Tenerife Shipyards finds it difficult to maintain its entire workforce in light of the disappearance of its main client.

Davinia Suárez, a worker at Tenerife Shipyards, stated to Cadena Ser Canarias that she is unaware of “how we are going to move forward if Ensco is the largest offshore company in the world.” “We see that it is slipping out of our hands and they are taking the work without response and without help. It is concerning that we are not allowed to compete with Las Palmas,” she states.

Photo: provided