Tidewater has been fined $450m in Equatorial Guinea for allegedly operating its offshore vessels in the country’s waters without appropriate customs approvals.
The US offshore-vessel giant says it is in discussions with authorities to resolve the issue, which involves five units that were working there last year.
Equatorial Guinea, like many countries, allows offshore shipowners to bring in equipment to its waters without paying customs duties, provided the vessels do not remain in the country permanently.
However, Tidewater says officials have accused it of not filing the proper papers to secure permission to bring the vessels in on a temporary basis.
Authorities have used somewhat punitive maths for the fine — multiplying the unit’s insured value by five and then doubling that to get to the fine.
“The company is still assessing the underlying legal and factual background but it disagrees both with the underlying claims of the customs department and the arbitrary and unjustifiable size of the assessment,” the New York-listed owner told US securities regulators.
The outfit says it is evaluating its rights under charter contracts for the vessels, since obligations to file for customs authorisations is often assigned to the charterer.
How much the New Orleans-headquartered company could actually end up paying remains to be seen.
Tidewater did not identify the vessels involved and a spokesman could not be immediately reached for comment but the fine formula implies at least one of the units is worth $45m.
The situation is not the owner’s only dispute over import duties.
Tidewater is also engaged in a fight in Brazil over BRL 155m ($77.8m) in fines from the customs office in Macae, a supply-vessel hub for the country’s offshore industry.
Two of the company’s subsidiaries in Brazil were accused of failing to obtain import licences for 17 vessels serving Petrobras on three-year charters that ended in 2009.
Tidewater has insisted that the vessels are exempt from the import duties and that there is a high probability that the fines will be thrown out.
The company has also filed two lawsuits to obtain certainty over the insistence by the Brazilian state that foreign offshore-vessel owners operating in Brazil owe import taxes of 3% to 16% of each vessel’s value.
