Joshua Seemu­n­gal

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Jour­nal­ist

joshua.seemu­n­gal@guardian.co.tt

In the first part of our in­ves­tiga­tive re­port ‘Leak­ing Gas Cylin­ders - Where There’s Smoke, There’s Fire’ yes­ter­day, the Trinidad Guardian told the per­son­al sto­ries of peo­ple in­jured by fires caused by leak­ing 20-pound liq­ue­fied pe­tro­le­um gas (LPG) cylin­ders.

The Guardian sought an­swers from Na­tion­al Pe­tro­le­um (NP) about claims that some of its LPG 20lb tanks are leak­ing. The state com­pa­ny ac­knowl­edged that they re­ceive “re­ports from time to time about leaks” but sug­gest­ed the is­sues were like­ly re­sult­ing from ac­ces­sories such as faulty reg­u­la­tors, af­ter de­fend­ing its qual­i­ty as­sur­ance sys­tem.

In part two of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, Guardian Me­dia speaks with fire of­fi­cers, ex­am­ines the stan­dards in place for LPG tanks and ac­ces­sories, and dis­cuss­es the is­sue with in­dus­try sources and you, the pub­lic.

Fire of­fi­cers: Faulty tanks a com­mon com­plaint

Guardian Me­dia spoke with a cou­ple se­nior fire of­fi­cers off the record and they said fires as a re­sult of leak­ing gas cylin­ders have been a com­mon rea­son for emer­gency calls and that they have been get­ting a lot of them. One of them said he was in­jured in one such in­ci­dent. How­ev­er, they could not con­firm if the num­ber of in­ci­dents has in­creased this year.

Pub­lic com­plaints

about leaks

Sev­er­al mem­bers of the pub­lic have tak­en to so­cial me­dia re­cent­ly to com­plain about their ex­pe­ri­ences with leak­ing tanks. The Guardian col­lat­ed the com­ments on some of those in­ci­dents.

Car­ol Ram­per­sad: “Yes. Of late­ly I start­ed smelling the gas scent. Most times when I turned it on to use the stove. It’s an aw­ful scent.”

Ronald Ho­sein: “This same thing hap­pened to me. How­ev­er, I smelled the gas in time.”

Sharon Mo­hammed: “I have the same prob­lem and they say­ing the gas head is bad.”

El­sa St Clair: “I ex­pe­ri­enced that this week. I know it’s the tank be­cause I got an­oth­er one and it works fine.”

June Sewlal: “Yes, I put on a tank and in one week my gas fin­ished. To­tal mad­ness.”

Au­ro­ra Saphire: “Yes, I have been ex­pe­ri­enc­ing leak­age, un­til I did fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tions think­ing it was my reg­u­la­tor, but it wasn’t. It was the gas head and the gas don’t even last as long as it used to be­cause of that.”

Michelle JB: “Yes, I wrote to them about this. Every time a tank is bought, I’m hav­ing this prob­lem.”

Sean Mitchell: “I had got one once that had no seal.”

Na­dia Gan­garam: “This hap­pens to me most times.”

Shaquan­da Greene-Noel: “I changed the head, hose and gas tank twice and this is still hap­pen­ing.”

Jan­ice Paba­roo: “Yes, there’s a gas scent and the gas is fin­ish­ing much quick­er than usu­al.”

Kavi­ta Baldeosingh: “We had the same prob­lems with three tanks pur­chased thus far over a cou­ple of months.”

Vanes­sa Gaiton: “I bought a tank of gas three Sun­days ago and by Fri­day evening, the tank was emp­ty.”

Nigel Jairam: “Yes, this is true. Gas fin­ish­es so fast.”

Ar­lene Dud­ley-Walk­er: “But just last week I changed a tank be­cause of this same prob­lem.”

Triz Zy: “This is hap­pen­ing to me. I changed the tank twice and same thing. I have to turn off the stove im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter use or else the en­tire place is smelling like gas.”

Suni­ta Ram­roop: “It’s hap­pen­ing right now as I speak, so I have to al­ways re­mem­ber to lock off the valve or else the whole kitchen would smell bad!”

Myr­sha Richard­son: “This is hap­pen­ing to me right about now. Every day I have been smelling the gas.”

Michelle Ram­sawak: “Well, last month alone I changed three gas tanks be­cause of this.”

Savi­ka Singh: “Yes, I changed the gas head, hose and it didn’t stop. I got so fed up and bought a new stove and same prob­lem.”

Rachel Primus: “Yes, this has hap­pened to me and I thought it was my reg­u­la­tor, so I even changed that too. Scared to turn on the gas to cook. Pur­chased an­oth­er tank and same prob­lem.”

Par­bati Bachu: “I am al­so hav­ing the same prob­lem. The gas is al­ways smelling.”

Can­dace Dick­son: “I am cur­rent­ly hav­ing the same prob­lem as well.”

Kathyann Bentick: “Af­ter re­mov­ing the red cap off of this new tank of gas, this is what I dis­cov­ered (bro­ken rub­ber seal). NP you all need to check these tanks af­ter they have been re­filled. Peo­ple’s lives are at risk of hav­ing an ex­plo­sion from these faulty gas head rub­bers.”

Ray­mond Ray­mond: “Bought this tank of gas from an NP sta­tion in Ari­ma and on­ly when I hooked it and turned it on, I re­alised that the rub­ber was miss­ing. Gas was leak­ing heavy while I held an open flame in my hand, this could’ve end­ed re­al­ly bad. Now who is to blame in this sit­u­a­tion?”

No stan­dard for heads - reg­u­la­tors

A se­nior pe­tro­le­um in­dus­try source told Guardian Me­dia that the busi­ness of LPG gas cylin­ders has tra­di­tion­al­ly been con­sid­ered a safe and ef­fi­cient prac­tice. How­ev­er, he said, he un­der­stands that an in­creas­ing num­ber of gas heads/reg­u­la­tors are be­ing im­port­ed from Chi­na.

On­line, ac­cord­ing to our re­search, they can be bought for as cheap as US$1.50 per reg­u­la­tor.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Bu­reau of Stan­dards has some LPG-re­lat­ed stan­dards. How­ev­er, while there are com­pul­so­ry stan­dards for pig­tails and flex­i­ble hose con­nec­tors, there are no stan­dards for heads or reg­u­la­tors. Stan­dards for pe­ri­od­ic in­spec­tion and test­ing of gas cylin­ders in­tend­ed for com­pressed, liq­ue­fied, or dis­solved gas are vol­un­tary.

Ac­cord­ing to NP’s guide­lines, if a gas cylin­der is not to be used im­me­di­ate­ly, it should be stored in a cool, well-ven­ti­lat­ed area. Yet, many gas sta­tions and gro­cery stores keep their tanks out­side ex­posed to the el­e­ments. Rub­ber seals are prone to de­te­ri­o­ra­tion at high­er tem­per­a­tures, which can cause the rub­ber to soft­en or hard­en, caus­ing is­sues with the seal.

Deal­ers un­aware of high re­turns

Pres­i­dent of the Fed­er­a­tion of Agri­cul­tur­al and Non-Fi­nan­cial Co­op­er­a­tives and for­mer pres­i­dent of the Pe­tro­le­um Deal­ers As­so­ci­a­tion, Derek Joseph, was un­aware of deal­ers com­plain­ing of un­usu­al­ly high re­turns of LPG cylin­ders.

He said usu­al­ly, out of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 50 tanks sold, one or two would be re­turned by cus­tomers for sus­pect­ed leaks. How­ev­er, he said if cus­tomers are com­plain­ing about an in­creas­ing num­ber of gas tank leak­ages and their com­plaints are in­deed ac­cu­rate, it is al­most cer­tain­ly re­lat­ed to the rub­ber seals on the tanks.