Gail Alexan­der

Once the En­er­gy Min­istry fi­nalis­es a re­port on the oil tanker ex­plo­sion which oc­curred in June—when one per­son was killed—any de­ter­mi­na­tion of com­pen­sa­tion will then be con­tem­plat­ed.

Par­lia­men­tary Sec­re­tary in the En­er­gy Min­istry Nicole Olivierre in­di­cat­ed this at yes­ter­day’s Par­lia­ment sit­ting. She was re­ply­ing to Op­po­si­tion ques­tions on the ex­plo­sion which oc­curred in Pe­nal. It re­sult­ed in one fa­tal­i­ty—a fa­ther of three who was killed.

Olivierre said the TT Po­lice Ser­vice and TT Fire Ser­vice, which were the first re­spon­ders, con­duct­ed in­ves­ti­ga­tions which in­clud­ed ev­i­dence—col­lec­tion plus in­ter­views with af­fect­ed peo­ple. The Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Agency al­so did a probe which in­clud­ed site vis­its.

Olivierre said the Min­istry met rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Massy as well as two oth­er em­ploy­ees of To­tal Con­trac­tor Ser­vices Lim­it­ed (TC­SL) who were do­ing pre-op­er­a­tions checks on the tanker. Signed state­ments were col­lect­ed. The Min­istry al­so vis­it­ed the area where the in­ci­dent oc­curred and wit­nessed the sam­pling of residue in­side the tanker. This was done by an in­de­pen­dent agency.

“A re­port with the Min­istry’s pre­lim­i­nary find­ings has been pre­pared and it will be fi­nalised up­on re­ceipt of the fi­nal re­ports from Massy and the TT Fire ser­vices,” she said, adding that the re­port will al­so de­ter­mine what rec­om­men­da­tions will be made go­ing for­ward.