kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt
Paria Fuel Trading Company Ltd had no legal responsibility to rescue five Land and Marine Contracting Services (LMCS) divers trapped inside its Sealine No.36 last February.
The Commission of Enquiry (CoE) into the Paria/LMCS tragedy heard that the State-owned oil company’s only obligation was to support emergency and action rescue plans LMCS had for its employees.
Presenting Paria’s final submissions to the evidentiary hearing phase of the CoE at the International Waterfront Centre, Port-of-Spain, on Thursday, Senior Counsel Gilbert Peterson presented an 11-point defence of the company’s conduct in the rescue and recovery phase of the incident.
Peterson noted that during the CoE, several parties criticised Paria’s behaviour on February 25, 2022, when a differential pressure (Delta P) event occurred at Berth No.6 in the Pointe-a-Pierre harbour.
The event created a vortex that plunged LMCS divers Christopher Boodram, Fyzal Kurban, Yusuf Henry, Kazim Ali Jr and Rishi Nagassar into the 30-inch pipeline.
However, Peterson argued that factual and expert evidence at the CoE did not support the criticism and that Paria’s actions were wholly reasonable, given its operating conditions following the incident.
He said the resources available and the safety potential for proposed rescuers were live issues for Paria’s decision-makers.
Paria claimed it did not know the divers were in the pipe between 2.45 pm and 5.30 pm on February 25, 2022. Personnel only became aware when Boodram emerged. LMCS personnel were uncooperative and hostile to Paria employees that day.
Peterson said although LMCS Managing Director Kazim Ali Snr and Paria Incident Commander Collin Piper knew each other personally, there is no evidence that LMCS presented a rescue plan on that day.
“All we keep hearing is LMCS wanted to dive, and Piper stopped them.”
He said owing to the LMCS rescue plan and its inability to provide adequate resources to attempt a rescue, Paria engaged multiple specialist service providers: Eastern Emergency Response Services, Mitchell’s Professional Diving Services Company, HHSL Safety Systems Ltd, Hull Support Services Ltd, Subsea Global Solutions and Offshore Technology Solutions Ltd. It also had assistance from Heritage Petroleum personnel and the Coast Guard.
However, Paria’s knowledge of the pipeline condition was inadequate, unaware of the location and state of an inflatable plug and the divers.
Paria then learned that hazards existed and assumed there was significant oil content in the pipe. Boodram’s emergence, covered in oil, supported that assumption. Paria also deduced that the inflatable plug presented the possibility of another Delta P event and saw there were oxygen tanks in the pipe.
At the time, Piper was aware of incidents locally and abroad where rescuers perished while attempting a rescue, which was a factor in his decision-making.
Peterson said none of the entities contacted by Paria wanted to enter the pipeline. The Coast Guard advised that its divers did not possess the training or specialist equipment. Eastern’s confined space technicians could not undertake a diving rescue, and Mitchell’s found the risk too high.
Several expert witnesses advised it was unsafe to enter the pipeline to rescue the trapped divers. Dive supervisor at Heritage Rolph Seales and commercial diver Krishna Fuentes’ evidence suggested that a safe rescue operation would require six to seven commercial divers.
While LMCS diver Michael Kurban entered the pipe, and specialist divers Conan and Conrad Beddoe were willing to go in for a rescue attempt, the number was insufficient based on Fuentes and Seales’ suggestion.
Regarding the contract, Peterson said Paria followed all its obligations. However, LMCS’s disobedience of Paria’s Permit-to-Work (PTW) system caused it to remove its migration chamber, which led to the deadly Delta P event.
CoE chairman Jerome Lynch pointed out that the Method Statement sequencing the work that day included removing the inflatable plug. The Method Statement, approved by Paria, accompanied the PTW.
However, Peterson argued that despite an oversight, LMCS erred because the PWT did not authorise the removal of the plug.
Based on Peterson’s submissions, he described counsel for the families of Nagassar and Henry, Prakash Ramadhar’s recommendation for criminal prosecutions of Paria personnel as outrageous.
“I wish Mr Ramadhar was here because I wanted to describe his invitation to the commission for criminal proceedings against Paria and its personnel as outrageous as the evidence did not support this. It may grab a good headline. It may grab the newspaper front page, but on the evidence: it cannot be supported. There is no evidence here of anything close to criminal conduct.”
Peterson said he knows the CoE would not easily fall prey to that temptation. Lynch said the CoE would have to find evidence of gross negligence to consider the recommendation.
In Paria’s recommendation, Peterson asked the CoE to consider scuba diving guidelines as experts believe it is not for commercial work. Several witnesses also spoke of divers with saturation diving and confined space diving expertise.
He called for recommendations to fine-tune those capabilities to include pipeline entry since T&T has an oil and gas industry with several plants.
He also proposed the creation of a national registry detailing people and companies with various equipment and expertise that can respond to emergencies.
Lynch found value in the recommendations but added that a company as big as Paria should have some of this equipment, including those that can provide live footage inside a pipe to detect various problems.
Lynch said the CoE would write its report and have it ready by April. However, it has no control over whether it gets published.
“It is in the hands of others.”
The CoE resumed at 9.30 am on Friday.
