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Monday, February 24, 2025

In wake of threats over Petrotrin oil spill- Security increased

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20141122

Se­cu­ri­ty at Petrotrin in­stal­la­tions was beefed last night as the state-owned oil com­pa­ny raised its threat alert af­ter a cryp­tic warn­ing was is­sued in a video post­ed on Youtube from the group Anony­mous T&T.Yes­ter­day, the group, which has de­scribed it­self as a "loose­ly as­so­ci­at­ed in­ter­na­tion­al net­work of hu­man/civ­il/an­i­mal ac­tivist," is­sued the threat as it called on the com­pa­ny to come "clean" on the Mara­bel­la oil spill and its im­pact on res­i­dents.

The video was high­light­ed on the CNC3 7 pm news­cast last night. It was filmed as a news bul­letin and fea­tured an in­di­vid­ual dressed in black and wear­ing a Guy Fawkes mask. In the video, the in­di­vid­ual al­leged Petrotrin was not be­ing open with the na­tion on the im­pact the Ju­ly oil spill, which saw 8,000 bar­rels of oil leak­ing in­to the Guaracara Riv­er, is hav­ing on Mara­bel­la res­i­dents.

The video end­ed omi­nous­ly with the in­di­vid­ual stat­ing: "We are anony­mous. We are a le­gion. Con­sid­er this a warn­ing. Ex­pect us."Last night, Petrotrin pres­i­dent Khalid Has­sanali told the T&T Guardian the threat was not be­ing tak­en light­ly."All threats are tak­en se­ri­ous­ly and will be re­port­ed to the po­lice.

"I was not aware that any­thing like this was com­ing, I was tak­en by sur­prise this af­ter­noon (yes­ter­day). Our chief se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cer will be han­dling the mat­ter short­ly," Has­sanali said in a tele­phone in­ter­view.He said En­er­gy Min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine was in­formed about the video and steps were be­ing tak­en to ad­dress the con­tents of the video. Petrotrin's chief se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cer was "as­sess­ing the se­cu­ri­ty at the re­fin­ery and in­stal­la­tions," Has­sanali added.

Veiled threat

At press time, the num­ber views on the video stood at 301, with 28 peo­ple lik­ing it and five peo­ple dis­lik­ing it.The cloaked in­di­vid­ual, speak­ing with a dis­tort­ed voice in the video, said: "It has come to our at­ten­tion that a res­i­dent of Mara­bel­la, Aki­moo Roger, claimed his daugh­ter and wife are still sick and is call­ing on state-owned oil com­pa­ny Petrotrin to re­lease med­ical re­ports and pro­vide com­pen­sa­tion to the res­i­dents."

The per­son went on to say: "We have rea­son to be­lieve that their ill­ness is caused by the use of Corex­it 9500 in the wa­ters of the sur­round­ing ar­eas used to ac­cel­er­ate the process of de­grad­ing oil."We al­so have sus­pi­cion to be­lieve that it was al­so what caused the death of the cou­ple who went swim­ming in the wa­ters of the La Brea area ear­li­er in 2014, not long af­ter they dis­persed Corex­it 9500 to clean up a to­tal of 11 oil spills which oc­curred be­tween 17 De­cem­ber 2013 and 29 De­cem­ber 2013."

How­ev­er, Has­sanali last evening de­nied Corex­it was used in the clean-up ef­forts in Mara­bel­la or La Brea."I want to as­sure that Corex­it was not used in the clean-up in the riv­er and in the spill that took place on De­cem­ber 17 last year. Corex­it was used more than one mile off­shore Pointe-a-Pierre and nowhere else," he said.

Has­sanali said he did not un­der­stand why such a video was made, es­pe­cial­ly since the com­pa­ny has been meet­ing with a com­mit­tee that was formed by the res­i­dents.e said he al­so was not fa­mil­iar with the name Aki­moo Roger nor was he aware res­i­dents were ex­pe­ri­enc­ing med­ical prob­lems.

He said when the oil spilled in­to the riv­er, Petrotrin's med­ical team im­me­di­ate­ly ad­dressed the heath con­cerns of res­i­dents di­rect­ly af­fect­ed. He said from his un­der­stand­ing per­sons who were asth­mat­ic were the on­ly ones who had some is­sues."My un­der­stand­ing is that most of those have cleared up now," he added.

Who is Anony­mous

Anony­mous is a loose­ly as­so­ci­at­ed in­ter­na­tion­al net­work of ac­tivist and hack­tivist en­ti­ties.The group be­came known for a se­ries of well-pub­li­cised pub­lic­i­ty stunts and dis­trib­uted de­nial-of-ser­vice (DDoS) at­tacks on gov­ern­ment, re­li­gious and cor­po­rate Web sites.Anony­mous mem­bers (known as "Anons") can be dis­tin­guished in pub­lic by the wear­ing of stylised Guy Fawkes masks.Tar­gets of Anony­mous hack­tivism in­clud­ed gov­ern­ment agen­cies of the US, Is­rael, Tunisia, Ugan­da and oth­ers.


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