The fire which fol­lowed an ear­ly morn­ing ex­plo­sion at the re­cent­ly opened Ni­quan En­er­gy plant on the for­mer Petrotrin com­pound has been ex­tin­guished.

An up­date from the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty stat­ed that ap­pli­ances from the Mon Re­pos Fire Sta­tion quick­ly brought the fire un­der con­trol and are work­ing close­ly with Ni­quan ground man­agers and of­fi­cials from the plant.

There are no re­port­ed in­juries at his time. An as­sess­ment will fol­low cool­ing pro­ce­dures.

So far there are no re­ports of in­juries or ca­su­al­ties fol­low­ing an ex­plo­sion at around 6 .30 am at the hy­dro­c­rack­ing tow­er unit. That is the tow­er that is used to burn off ex­cess gas fu­el.

Op­er­a­tors who were en­ter­ing the plant to try to shut down op­er­a­tions said night shift work­ers were leav­ing the plant at the time of the ex­plo­sion oc­curred and "so far" there were no re­ports of ca­su­al­ties.

Ni­quan of­fi­cials said the plant had to be shut down be­fore wax in the tow­er's pipeline was re­moved. On­ly some op­er­a­tors were be­ing al­lowed in to deal with the spe­cif­ic is­sue.

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Franklin Khan and oth­er Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials are close­ly mon­i­tor­ing the sit­u­a­tion.

Res­i­dents as far north as Cal­i­for­nia and as far south as Oropouche were star­tled by the noise from the ex­plo­sion.

A Bat­too Av­enue res­i­dent said: "Our bod­ies jerked with the im­pact of the ex­plo­sion, it was so hard . . . who­ev­er in the plant might have been thrown to the ground with the im­pact."

Eye­wit­ness video showed that the top of the tow­er blew off and huge columns of smoke were bil­low­ing from the tow­er.

Po­lice have blocked off the South­ern Main Road from the Pointe-a-Pierre Plaza to Mara­bel­la.

The Ni­quan plant was opened by Prime Min­is­ter Kei­th Row­ley a month ago.