Ke­jan Haynes

A Min­istry of En­er­gy in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the dead­ly June 15, 2023 fire at the Ni­Quan gas-to-liq­uids plant found “in­ad­e­quate lead­er­ship and su­per­vi­sion,” poor risk con­trols, and a break­down in both safe­ty sys­tems and emer­gency re­sponse. The in­ci­dent re­sult­ed in the death of pipe fit­ter Al­lan­lane Ramkissoon. In­ves­ti­ga­tors de­scribed the fa­cil­i­ty as “still strug­gling with ba­sic safe­ty gov­er­nance.”

The re­port, laid in Par­lia­ment on Wednes­day by En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, rec­om­mend­ed ur­gent re­forms to train­ing, emer­gency pre­pared­ness, con­trac­tor over­sight, and plant safe­ty sys­tems. It al­so urged a full re­view of the plant’s Man­age­ment of Change process and elim­i­na­tion of vague in­ter­nal terms such as “sky valve” and “lad­der valve.”

Mooni­lal, speak­ing in the House, said the re­port was re­leased to bring trans­paren­cy to the mat­ter and to give Ramkissoon’s fam­i­ly and the pub­lic a full ac­count of what oc­curred. “This re­port is here... so that not on­ly the Ramkissoon fam­i­ly but Trinidad and To­ba­go can look at what went on that night at the Ni­Quan plant,” he said. He al­so ac­cused the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion of spend­ing tens of thou­sands of dol­lars in le­gal fees to block dis­clo­sure of the re­port. “They nev­er gave a ham­per, a dol­lar, an io­ta of as­sis­tance to the fam­i­ly,” he added.

The re­port de­tailed mul­ti­ple fail­ings that con­tributed to the ac­ci­dent, in­clud­ing a lack of train­ing, in­com­plete pro­ce­dures, and crit­i­cal safe­ty checks that were missed. Ramkissoon was re­mov­ing a ni­tro­gen hose while await­ing a steam hose when a fire erupt­ed near the con­denser at­tached to the fa­cil­i­ty’s frac­tion­a­tion col­umn. He had not been in­struct­ed to close the valve be­fore de­tach­ing the hose, and ab­nor­mal wax tank con­di­tions may have caused hy­dro­car­bon vapours to back­flow and ig­nite.

Three of the op­er­a­tors on du­ty at the time were trainees. Doc­u­men­ta­tion had list­ed the task as high-risk and re­quir­ing a har­ness, but there was no record of Ramkissoon be­ing out­fit­ted with one. The fire alarm was not trig­gered, the emer­gency con­tact num­ber was not in ser­vice, and night-shift work­ers had nev­er been in­clud­ed in drills. It took near­ly an hour for an am­bu­lance to ar­rive.

Root caus­es were list­ed as “lack of knowl­edge,” “in­ad­e­quate en­gi­neer­ing,” and “in­ad­e­quate stan­dards.”

For­mer En­er­gy Min­is­ter and for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young ob­ject­ed to the lay­ing of the re­port with­out in­put from Ni­Quan. “Did in­de­pen­dent se­nior coun­sel ad­vise the Min­istry... that the pub­li­ca­tion of the draft Min­istry re­port, which has to­day been laid with­out the con­sent and com­ments of Ni­Quan, would equate to a breach of Ni­Quan’s con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly en­shrined right?” he asked. 

Mooni­lal replied that he had sought and re­ceived ad­vice from the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and act­ed ac­cord­ing­ly.

Young then said he asked about ex­ter­nal coun­sel and not,  “a dunce AG,” spark­ing up­roar in the cham­ber. Be­cause Speak­er Jagdeo Singh said he did not hear the com­ment, Young was not made to apol­o­gise or with­draw the state­ment.  The sup­ple­men­tal ques­tion was ruled out of or­der by the Speak­er.