Methane gas was de­tect­ed un­der the ANR Robin­son Air­port con­struc­tion site in Crown Point, To­ba­go, on Sun­day, the Na­tion­al In­fra­struc­ture De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (NID­CO) said yes­ter­day.

The gas was 95 feet un­der­ground and was dis­cov­ered dur­ing a rou­tine pipe in­stal­la­tion ex­er­cise by the con­trac­tor as part of the planned works on the air­port project, NID­CO said in a me­dia state­ment.

It added that fol­low­ing the dis­cov­ery, all rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties were no­ti­fied, and pre­lim­i­nary test­ing was un­der­tak­en with the sup­port of the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) to de­ter­mine the type and ori­gin of the gas.

NID­CO ex­plained that all site ac­tiv­i­ties were sus­pend­ed, the area was cor­doned off, and the Fire Ser­vice re­mained on stand­by for the rest of the day.

It added that the gas pres­sure had sig­nif­i­cant­ly dis­si­pat­ed around 6 pm on the same evening.

Fur­ther tests were con­duct­ed on Mon­day by an in­de­pen­dent con­sul­tant, con­firm­ing that the gas was methane—a com­mon bio­gas oc­cur­ring in shal­low swampy ar­eas.

NID­CO said al­though the gas has now ful­ly dis­si­pat­ed, mon­i­tor­ing for its pres­ence at the source will con­tin­ue in the in­ter­est of pub­lic safe­ty.

Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to con­tact Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine for com­ment, but calls and mes­sages went unan­swered.