The cut­ting of a six-inch oil trans­fer line on Primera Oil and Gas Lim­it­ed’s Fyz­abad Block may be in­dica­tive of a dan­ger­ous new un­der­tak­ing by scrap met­al thieves who are most­ly un­hin­dered as they car­ry out their il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties across the coun­try.

While in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to this in­ci­dent are on­go­ing and there has not yet been a de­ter­mi­na­tion of whether the cul­prits were sabo­teurs or thieves, it fits in with an in­creas­ing trend where oil fa­cil­i­ties are be­ing tar­get­ed.

Met­al fix­tures are reg­u­lar­ly be­ing cut and cart­ed away from old Petrotrin fa­cil­i­ties, but these thefts are no longer lim­it­ed to aban­doned fields if this lat­est in­ci­dent is any­thing to go by.

What is par­tic­u­lar­ly wor­ry­ing is that there could have been a trag­ic out­come as a sec­tion of an ac­tive pipeline was hacked off, caus­ing spillage of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 250 bar­rels of oil, and forc­ing the evac­u­a­tion of 40 near­by res­i­dents. The loss in­curred be­cause of crude oil cov­er­ing acres of land is still be­ing es­ti­mat­ed, but will in­clude the de­struc­tion of food crops and dam­age to a tilapia pond.

Thieves, lured by prospects for ill-got­ten prof­its from the boom­ing glob­al trade in scrap met­als, have been hav­ing a field day, mak­ing off with man­hole cov­ers, cut­ting cop­per ca­bles and dis­man­tling any type of in­fra­struc­ture with met­al fix­tures.

And they have been go­ing to dan­ger­ous lengths with these thefts.

Ca­ble thieves were blamed for a fire that de­stroyed two hous­es at Bayshore, Mara­bel­la. In April, a man was elec­tro­cut­ed while cut­ting ca­ble wires along the Rochard Dou­glas Road in Bar­rack­pore and res­i­dents of Bournes Road, St James, were left with­out wa­ter af­ter cop­per fit­tings on WASA pipes in that com­mu­ni­ty were stolen.

Just yes­ter­day, the Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion (DO­MA) re­port­ed that scrap met­al thieves are now tar­get­ing the cop­per lines at­tached to air-con­di­tion­ing units on build­ing rooftops in Port-of-Spain. In one in­stance, they made off with an en­tire 24,000 BTU con­denser.

There have been some ar­rests. Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les re­cent­ly told Par­lia­ment 184 per­sons had been ar­rest­ed and charged for the theft and van­dal­ism of TSTT cop­per wires. How­ev­er, that is a drop in the buck­et com­pared to the scale of these il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties.

The Scrap Iron Deal­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTSI­DA) has been spend­ing a great deal of time dis­tanc­ing it­self from these il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties and ap­peal­ing for in­ter­ven­tions by the Gov­ern­ment to reg­u­larise the sec­tor.

How­ev­er, a lot more than a leg­isla­tive re­sponse is need­ed to curb the out-of-con­trol thiev­ery of pub­lic and pri­vate prop­er­ty. This is yet an­oth­er sit­u­a­tion that de­mands a more force­ful re­sponse from the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) to pre­vent an un­be­liev­ably un­pleas­ant sit­u­a­tion from get­ting worse.

Glob­al de­mand for scrap met­al has sky­rock­et­ed in re­cent years. Scrap met­al ex­ports from this coun­try es­ca­lat­ed from ap­prox­i­mate­ly $69 mil­lion to $216 mil­lion over 10 years.

The lure of easy mon­ey from an un­reg­u­lat­ed sys­tem has left cit­i­zens at the mer­cy of van­dals and thieves, in­cur­ring pro­hib­i­tive costs for re­place­ments and re­pairs.

The Fyz­abad in­ci­dent has shown the po­ten­tial risks to the pub­lic if the scrap iron crim­i­nals are left to con­tin­ue with their il­le­gal and dan­ger­ous ac­tiv­i­ties.

The po­ten­tial for the loss of in­no­cent lives is great and there is a need for ur­gent ac­tion from the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties.