SASCHA WIL­SON

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

An in­ter­na­tion­al ma­rine ex­pert yes­ter­day joined the search for miss­ing oil rig work­er Pe­te Phillip. This was con­firmed by the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries via a state­ment.

It said, “In­ter­na­tion­al Ex­pert, T&T Sal­vage, has al­so ar­rived to as­sist with the as­sess­ment of the sit­u­a­tion and to ad­vise on the con­tin­u­ing op­er­a­tions. T&T Sal­vage is a com­plete ma­rine ser­vices com­pa­ny com­mit­ted to the emer­gency re­sponse and pre­pared­ness needs of the in­ter­na­tion­al mar­itime and en­er­gy sec­tors.”

The min­istry al­so an­nounced that its in­ves­tiga­tive team as­signed to the in­ci­dent will be named short­ly, as it said it re­mains ful­ly en­gaged in as­sist­ing Well Ser­vices Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed and Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed by pro­vid­ing 24-hour sup­port for the re­sponse to the in­ci­dent at Rig 110.

“Min­is­ter Young has been com­mu­ni­cat­ing with per­sons from both Wells Ser­vices and Her­itage on a reg­u­lar ba­sis in or­der to ob­tain up­dates and al­so to of­fer sup­port.”

There has been no sight of 45-year-old Phillip since he fell in­to the wa­ter when Rig 110 col­lapsed in the Her­itage Off­shore East Field at 3.09 am on Sun­day.

His broth­er Brent, who spent a third day at the Trin­mar Base yes­ter­day, was hop­ing for news that he was found alive.

Well Ser­vices said there were 75 per­son­nel on­board, and one work­er was in­jured while the oth­ers were safe­ly evac­u­at­ed af­ter the in­ci­dent.

Mean­while, for­mer OSH in­spec­tor Safraz Ali was al­so hope­ful that Phillip would be found. In a tele­phone in­ter­view, he ex­pressed his full con­fi­dence in Se­nior In­spec­tor Ja­son Loork­hoor, who leads the Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Agency (OS­HA) in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the in­ci­dent.

In a re­lease on Mon­day, OS­HA con­firmed that a pro­hi­bi­tion no­tice was is­sued af­ter ini­tial in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

Ali said sev­er­al fac­tors could have caused the col­lapse, in­clud­ing struc­tur­al in­tegri­ty or process-re­lat­ed is­sues.

He said there are dif­fer­ent time­lines for struc­tures and equip­ment in the en­er­gy sec­tor to un­der­go in­spec­tions and au­dits. He said in­ter­na­tion­al best prac­tice stan­dards un­der the Amer­i­can Pe­tro­le­um In­sti­tute (AP1), stat­ed that a der­rick is in­spect­ed once every five years, but some struc­tures re­quire year­ly in­spec­tions. He said the Min­istry and OS­HA al­so have in­spec­tion pro­grammes.

“So, all this will come out (in the in­ves­ti­ga­tions), when last these two bod­ies would have done in­spec­tions and what were their find­ings,” he said.

Mean­while, Hunters’ Search and Res­cue Team leader Val­lence Ramb­harat said while they did not search yes­ter­day, they con­tin­ue to as­sist Well Ser­vices.

“Our ma­rine ex­perts, who are look­ing at the drift on that par­tic­u­lar day, sug­gest­ed that any­thing float­ing or mov­ing sub­sea would go be­yond the Ce­dros point so we thought we would take a break to­day and see if any­thing hap­pens ei­ther on the Well Ser­vices site or pop­ping up on any of the beach­es and we will take it from there.”

Phillip, a floor man, was ex­pect­ed to com­plete his two-week shift off­shore and be back home with his sev­en-month preg­nant wife and five chil­dren yes­ter­day, in time for Christ­mas.