The Min­istry of En­er­gy has launched a probe in­to the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing what ap­peared to be a gas leak which was cap­tured and post­ed to so­cial me­dia on Fri­day.

The in­di­vid­ual who cap­tured the 50-sec­ond video can be heard cau­tion­ing mo­torists tra­vers­ing the area. "If you head­ing south­bound on the South­ern Main Road and you just past Phoenix Park by Hy­dro Agri or Yara, this is what is hap­pen­ing there and this mist is cross­ing the road so pro­ceed with ex­tra cau­tion."

A pop­u­lar lo­cal tele­vi­sion pre­sen­ter shared the video on his Face­book ac­count with the cap­tion, "This gas is dead­ly, so please stay away from the area. A sus­pect­ed liq­uid ni­tro­gen leak at Phoenix Park on Fri­day 15th No­vem­ber 2024. Known as the in­vis­i­ble killer, due to its odour­less and taste­less na­ture, ni­tro­gen gas can be lethal if in­haled. The vapour of liq­uid ni­tro­gen can rapid­ly freeze skin tis­sue and eye flu­id, re­sult­ing in cold burns, frost­bite and per­ma­nent eye dam­age even by brief ex­po­sure. Ex­po­sure to Ni­tro­gen is dan­ger­ous be­cause it can re­place oxy­gen and lead to suf­fo­ca­tion." 

The al­leged leak al­so prompt­ed con­cerns over pub­lic safe­ty and en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pact. In a state­ment, Massy Gas Prod­ucts Ltd. as­sured the pub­lic of safe­ty fol­low­ing what was de­scribed as "ni­tro­gen re­lease dur­ing rou­tine op­er­a­tion."

The com­pa­ny fur­ther not­ed that at around 9:00 pm on Fri­day, ex­cess ni­tro­gen was vent­ed dur­ing a rou­tine mo­bile tanker fill­ing op­er­a­tion at Massy Gas Prod­ucts Ltd. "The Com­pa­ny would like to re­as­sure the pub­lic that there was no harm to peo­ple, prop­er­ty or the en­vi­ron­ment and we re­main com­mit­ted to main­tain­ing the high­est safe­ty stan­dard, pro­tect­ing our peo­ple and the en­vi­ron­ment."

Phoenix Park Gas Proces­sors Lim­it­ed (PPG­PL) has since dis­tanced it­self from the in­ci­dent main­tain­ing that there was no gas re­lease at its plant fa­cil­i­ty. "There was no gas re­lease at its plant fa­cil­i­ty on No­vem­ber 15th." 

In a state­ment is­sued yes­ter­day, the com­pa­ny not­ed that the so­cial me­dia video fu­elled spec­u­la­tions of a sus­pect­ed ni­tro­gen leak at the fa­cil­i­ty.

In set­ting the record straight, the com­pa­ny con­firmed that it was in­cor­rect­ly iden­ti­fied as the source of the re­lease. The com­pa­ny al­so re­mind­ed that it process­es nat­ur­al gas and sep­a­rates nat­ur­al gas liq­uids in­to propane, bu­tane and nat­ur­al gaso­line.

"PPG­PL is com­mit­ted to safe­ty and takes very strin­gent mea­sures in main­tain­ing high safe­ty stan­dards through­out its op­er­a­tions."