RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Petrotrin is still try­ing to clamp a leak­ing sub sea line which has been spew­ing thick crude oil in­to the Sol­da­do North Field in the Gulf of Paria. The leak was spot­ted since Mon­day and af­ter two days of in­ten­sive ef­forts by divers to source the leak, the sub-sea clamp on Well S-694 con­tin­ues to leak.

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, Petrotrin of­fi­cials said the leak has been con­fined to a spe­cif­ic area.

“The com­pa­ny’s Op­er­a­tions and Health, Safe­ty and En­vi­ron­ment (HSE) per­son­nel im­me­di­ate­ly re­spond­ed and Petrotrin’s In­ci­dent Com­mand Sys­tem (ICS) was ac­ti­vat­ed. Aer­i­al, ma­rine and land sur­veil­lance ex­er­cis­es were con­duct­ed since the ini­tial re­port of the oil leak, which re­vealed no ob­serv­able im­pact on any of the shore­lines along the south west­ern penin­su­la,” Petrotrin said.

The com­pa­ny said the Min­istry of En­er­gy & En­er­gy In­dus­tries, En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) and the oth­er reg­u­la­to­ry au­thor­i­ties have been no­ti­fied of the in­ci­dent.

The min­istry’s com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er Ro­ry Subi­ah did not re­spond to ques­tions about the fre­quen­cy of the leaks or what would be done to mit­i­gate any fur­ther leak­ages. Subi­ah said these ques­tions will be an­swered by Petrotrin.

How­ev­er, EMA man­ag­ing Hay­den Ro­mano said they will hold Petrotrin li­able if it is found the com­pa­ny was be­ing reck­less in any way.

“This is a mas­sive prob­lem which Petrotrin is aware of. One of the items iden­ti­fied by the Petrotrin board is age­ing in­fra­struc­ture and the need to spend a sig­nif­i­cant sum to up­grade their fa­cil­i­ties,” Ro­mano said.

“Petrotrin is try­ing to de­vel­op a main­te­nance pro­gramme to deal with the in­fra­struc­ture and as soon as they iden­ti­fy any leaks it is fixed im­me­di­ate­ly.”