KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries Dr Roodal Mooni­lal has called on for­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Stu­art Young to pub­licly con­demn what he de­scribed as a sus­pect­ed act of pipeline sab­o­tage in Bar­rack­pore, while dis­clos­ing claims from a res­i­dent sug­gest­ing pos­si­ble links to the Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM).

“I’ve seen the pic­tures of the pipeline, and it is clear­ly not ac­ci­den­tal. We are very con­cerned that there may be el­e­ments out there. One per­son in the area went so far as to sug­gest that it might be el­e­ments linked to the Op­po­si­tion PNM as well that are un­der­min­ing and sab­o­tag­ing our in­fra­struc­ture in those ar­eas be­cause in re­cent times we have had an uptick in oil pro­duc­tion,” Mooni­lal told re­porters in Clax­ton Bay yes­ter­day.

He said the mat­ter raised wider con­cerns about the se­cu­ri­ty of the coun­try’s en­er­gy in­fra­struc­ture and warned that the in­ci­dent could be part of a broad­er pat­tern of or­gan­ised ac­tiv­i­ty tar­get­ing the sec­tor.

His com­ments fol­lowed a de­tailed brief­ing on Mon­day’s hy­dro­car­bon leak in­volv­ing a three-inch Re­nais­sance En­er­gy lease op­er­a­tor pipeline in Bar­rack­pore. Of­fi­cials said be­tween five and ten feet of pipeline had been de­lib­er­ate­ly re­moved, re­sult­ing in an es­ti­mat­ed re­lease of 416 bar­rels of crude oil in­to an ad­ja­cent wa­ter­course.

Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um, which led the re­sponse, said it ac­ti­vat­ed its in­ci­dent com­mand sys­tem im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter the leak was de­tect­ed. Re­nais­sance En­er­gy iso­lat­ed the af­fect­ed pipeline with­in 20 min­utes by sus­pend­ing pump­ing op­er­a­tions.

Emer­gency re­sponse teams de­ployed vac­u­um trucks, ex­ca­va­tors, con­tain­ment booms and drone sur­veil­lance to con­tain and re­cov­er the spilled hy­dro­car­bons, with about 50 bar­rels re­cov­ered so far. The dam­aged sec­tion of pipeline has since been re­paired.

In­de­pen­dent mon­i­tor­ing con­duct­ed by CARIRI found air qual­i­ty at most lo­ca­tions re­mained with­in ac­cept­able lim­its, al­though lo­calised el­e­vat­ed con­cen­tra­tions of ben­zene and volatile or­gan­ic com­pounds were de­tect­ed with­in sec­tions of the drainage sys­tem.

While out­lin­ing the tech­ni­cal re­sponse, Mooni­lal said the dam­age ap­peared de­lib­er­ate rather than ac­ci­den­tal and sug­gest­ed the in­ci­dent formed part of broad­er con­cerns sur­round­ing in­fra­struc­ture se­cu­ri­ty.

He said no equip­ment had been re­moved from the site, ar­gu­ing that the ab­sence of theft in­di­cat­ed the pipeline had been de­lib­er­ate­ly tar­get­ed to dis­rupt pro­duc­tion.

It was in that con­text that Mooni­lal re­ferred to an al­le­ga­tion cir­cu­lat­ing in the area, say­ing that “one per­son in the area went so far as to sug­gest” pos­si­ble links be­tween the in­ci­dent and Op­po­si­tion fig­ures.

He did not en­dorse the al­le­ga­tion but said it re­flect­ed in­for­ma­tion re­layed through com­mu­ni­ty ob­ser­va­tions. Mooni­lal al­so raised con­cerns about in­di­vid­u­als al­leged­ly im­per­son­at­ing en­er­gy com­pa­ny per­son­nel, say­ing vil­lagers had re­port­ed see­ing peo­ple iden­ti­fy­ing them­selves as con­trac­tors in the area.

He warned that this raised the pos­si­bil­i­ty of unau­tho­rised ac­cess to op­er­a­tional sites and said gov­ern­ment agen­cies were re­view­ing iden­ti­fi­ca­tion pro­to­cols for en­er­gy work­ers and con­trac­tors.

He added that ex­pand­ed sur­veil­lance, in­clud­ing drone mon­i­tor­ing and in­creased po­lice pa­trols, was be­ing con­sid­ered, along with the in­tro­duc­tion of emer­gency re­port­ing lines for com­mu­ni­ties near en­er­gy in­stal­la­tions.

Mooni­lal al­so called on Young to pub­licly con­demn the in­ci­dent.

In­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the cause of the pipeline breach are on­go­ing, and the fi­nan­cial cost of the spill has not yet been de­ter­mined.

Mooni­lal said the im­me­di­ate fo­cus re­mained on con­tain­ment, re­cov­ery and strength­en­ing se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures around en­er­gy fa­cil­i­ties.

The in­ci­dent comes amid what he de­scribed as in­creased oil pro­duc­tion since 2025, with pro­jec­tions of a fur­ther 30 per cent in­crease over pre­vi­ous lev­els.

He said it was “pass­ing strange” that high­er pro­duc­tion ap­peared to co­in­cide with what he char­ac­terised as de­lib­er­ate acts of in­fra­struc­ture sab­o­tage.

Au­thor­i­ties have not an­nounced any ar­rests or iden­ti­fied any sus­pects in con­nec­tion with the in­ci­dent.