Renu­ka Singh

Two for­mer en­er­gy min­is­ters have con­firmed to the Sun­day Guardian that state-owned en­er­gy com­pa­ny Petrotrin must have been aware of the con­di­tion of its age­ing in­fra­struc­ture.More ques­tions have been raised about the in­tegri­ty and main­te­nance of Petrotrin's as­sets af­ter a pri­vate, in­ter­nal re­port was made pub­lic by the Guardian yes­ter­day.

The Sun­day Guardian learned that for­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan called for an au­dit of the en­tire en­er­gy sec­tor, and specif­i­cal­ly Trin­mar and Petrotrin, soon af­ter tak­ing of­fice in 2010.Seep­er­sad-Bachan, who was re­placed by cur­rent En­er­gy Min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine in a Cab­i­net reshuf­fle in 2011, yes­ter­day con­firmed that the au­dit trig­gered the Cab­i­net to de­vel­op the first oil spill re­sponse pro­gramme.A com­mit­tee was al­so put to­geth­er to eval­u­ate both Trin­mar's and Petrotrin's as­sets.

"The find­ings de­scribed the as­sets as age­ing back then," Seep­er­sad-Bachan said in a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day.She said the need to eval­u­ate the lo­cal as­set base came af­ter the mas­sive and dam­ag­ing BP oil spill off the Gulf of Mex­i­co in April 2010.That in­for­ma­tion was pre­sent­ed to the man­age­ment at Petrotrin.

Risky busi­ness

For­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter un­der the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) Con­rad Enill al­so con­firmed the poor state of the in­fra­struc­ture and pipelines at Petrotrin and said mas­sive cap­i­tal cost was need­ed to up­grade and re­place those. He said that was one of the main rea­sons he did not pur­sue the ex­plo­ration side of the sec­tor and fo­cused in­stead on re­fin­ing.

"It has al­ways been on the de­cline and would have tak­en a mas­sive in­jec­tion of cap­i­tal in­vest­ment to bring the in­fra­struc­ture up to date," Enill said, in a tele­phone in­ter­view on Fri­day.In dis­cussing the spill and both the com­pa­ny's and Ram­nar­ine's sub­se­quent re­sponse, Enill said this was the "ex­act rea­son" he did not push Petrotrin in­to oil."There were two ma­jor risks, one be­ing HSSE and the oth­er in­volved the risk to peo­ple and the en­vi­ron­ment," he said.

He said af­ter the re­al­i­ty of the Petro Caribe ini­tia­tive, T&T was not get­ting the same prof­it mar­gins with the then ex­ist­ing plant con­fig­u­ra­tion."We need­ed to in­crease the ca­pa­bil­i­ty of the re­fin­ery so that we could make more mon­ey from the same amount of prod­uct," he said.He main­tained that oil and ex­plo­ration should al­ways re­main the re­mit of pri­vate com­pa­nies and not state en­ter­pris­es."Petrotrin should have re­mained fo­cused on op­ti­mis­ing the re­fin­ery ca­pa­bil­i­ty," Enill said.

Trin­i­ty E&P:sab­o­tage or be­ing shield­ed?

While Seep­er­sad-Bachan steered clear of the is­sue of sab­o­tage, Enill said it was al­so a ma­jor con­cern un­der his tenure."That was a is­sue and that has not changed," he said."But this Gov­ern­ment came in with 28 seats–who does not like them enough to sab­o­tage them? There are no ma­jor out­stand­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions, no one is look­ing for lever­age, so sab­o­tage as a rea­son not mak­ing sense."

The pos­si­bil­i­ty of sab­o­tage has been raised by Trin­i­ty Ex­plo­ration and Pro­duc­tion, Petrotrin's joint ven­ture part­ner, but was dis­missed by Oil­fields Work­ers' Trade Union boss An­cel Ro­get.Ro­get, in an in­ter­view on Fri­day, ques­tioned why Ram­nar­ine con­tin­ued to speak so high­ly of that one com­pa­ny de­spite the fact that at least two of the 11 spills were found to be orig­i­nati­ing from its lo­cal as­sets. The com­pa­ny claimed the spillage was the re­sult of sab­o­tage and not through any fault of Trin­i­ty's.

"Is he pro­tect­ing them for a rea­son?" Ro­get asked.