Ed­u­ca­tion­al de­vel­op­ment pro­grammes cre­at­ed by bp Trinidad and To­ba­go (bpTT) have been suc­cess­ful, as three Ma­yaro-based stu­dents have ex­celled to be­come en­gi­neers in the Cas­sia Com­pres­sion (Cas­sia C) plat­form project.

Lo­cat­ed 57 kilo­me­tres off the south­east coast of Trinidad, the Cas­sia C project will en­able bpTT to ac­cess and pro­duce low-pres­sure gas re­serves from fields cur­rent­ly in pro­duc­tion in the Greater Cas­sia area, max­imis­ing re­cov­ery from these ex­ist­ing re­sources.

The plat­form will play a key role in T&T’s en­er­gy fu­ture, as well as com­ple­ment bp’s re­newed fo­cus on sus­tain­abil­i­ty and low car­bon en­er­gy, all to­wards be­com­ing a net-ze­ro com­pa­ny.

A state­ment from Bench­mark Com­mu­ni­ca­tions said Ma­yaro res­i­dent, Fe­li­cia Kissoon, works with the in­stru­ment and con­trol en­gi­neer­ing team sup­port­ing the Cas­sia C com­mis­sion­ing process.

For Kissoon, the jour­ney to this point has been a deeply per­son­al one.

She said, “My dad worked off­shore on the Cas­sia B and Kapok plat­forms and grow­ing up there was a pho­to of him on Cas­sia B in our liv­ing room. It wasn’t com­mon for women to work in en­gi­neer­ing, but I want­ed to fol­low in my dad’s foot­steps. That meant break­ing that ‘glass ceil­ing’ and in so do­ing, be­come an ex­am­ple for oth­er young women.”

She added: “My hard work paid off when I re­ceived a bpTT Brighter Prospects schol­ar­ship dur­ing my A’ Lev­el stud­ies at Rio Claro Col­lege and they con­tin­ued to sup­port me through­out the pur­suit of my De­gree in Process En­gi­neer­ing.”

Open to res­i­dents of Ma­yaro and en­vi­rons, the Brighter Prospects schol­ar­ship pro­gramme is one of bpTT’s flag­ship so­cial in­vest­ment ini­tia­tives.

Start­ed in 2003, it pro­vides fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance to Ma­yaro stu­dents who gain ac­cess to ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion at ap­proved in­sti­tu­tions.

For chem­i­cal and process en­gi­neer Roy­anne War­rick, the jour­ney was some­what dif­fer­ent but no less im­pact­ful.

War­rick said: “I was sup­port­ed by Brighter Prospects from A’ Lev­els straight through uni­ver­si­ty, but up­on grad­u­at­ing I didn’t im­me­di­ate­ly get a job in the field. I was ac­tu­al­ly work­ing at a fast-food restau­rant when I got an op­por­tu­ni­ty to teach at Prov­i­dence Girls’ Catholic School. Over a year lat­er, I got a call to join the Cas­sia C project and ful­fil my life­long dream to be an en­gi­neer.”