KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

An oil spill trig­gered by sus­pect­ed sab­o­tage in Bar­rack­pore is be­ing treat­ed as a pos­si­ble sign of wider co­or­di­nat­ed at­tacks on na­tion­al in­fra­struc­ture, En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal has said, as po­lice in­ves­ti­gate dam­age to a pipeline linked to Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed.

Her­itage said it re­spond­ed yes­ter­day to re­ports of a hy­dro­car­bon leak at GT Road, Bar­rack­pore, where pre­lim­i­nary as­sess­ments in­di­cate that ap­prox­i­mate­ly six feet of pipeline had been de­tached. The com­pa­ny said it strong­ly be­lieves the dam­age was the re­sult of sab­o­tage.

Ac­cord­ing to Her­itage, the in­ci­dent ac­ti­vat­ed its In­ci­dent Com­mand Sys­tem (ICS), trig­ger­ing emer­gency re­sponse pro­to­cols. Vac­u­um trucks and heavy ma­chin­ery were de­ployed to re­cov­er spilled hy­dro­car­bons, while con­tain­ment booms were in­stalled in a near­by wa­ter­course to pre­vent fur­ther spread of the leak.

The com­pa­ny said ini­tial con­tain­ment and re­cov­ery ef­forts re­main on­go­ing, with teams work­ing to lim­it en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pact in the sur­round­ing area. It al­so con­firmed that res­i­dents and stake­hold­ers in the vicin­i­ty are be­ing en­gaged and up­dat­ed as op­er­a­tions con­tin­ue. Air qual­i­ty test­ing and en­vi­ron­men­tal mon­i­tor­ing will be con­duct­ed as part of pre­cau­tion­ary mea­sures.

Her­itage said it “un­equiv­o­cal­ly con­demns all acts of sab­o­tage”, warn­ing that such in­ci­dents present se­ri­ous risks to pub­lic safe­ty, the en­vi­ron­ment and crit­i­cal na­tion­al en­er­gy in­fra­struc­ture. It added that pre­cau­tion­ary se­cu­ri­ty and mon­i­tor­ing mea­sures across its hy­dro­car­bon as­sets have been strength­ened in re­sponse to the in­ci­dent.

The Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries (MEEI), the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) and oth­er rel­e­vant reg­u­la­to­ry bod­ies have been no­ti­fied. In­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the in­ci­dent are on­go­ing.

Speak­ing sep­a­rate­ly, Min­is­ter Mooni­lal said the mat­ter is be­ing treat­ed as sab­o­tage and con­firmed that it has been re­port­ed to po­lice. He al­leged that in­di­vid­u­als in­vad­ed the fa­cil­i­ty and dam­aged pipeline in­fra­struc­ture, re­sult­ing in an oil leak af­fect­ing the GP Road area.

He said clean-up op­er­a­tions are cur­rent­ly un­der way and that the Gov­ern­ment is work­ing along­side Her­itage and the rel­e­vant agen­cies to man­age the en­vi­ron­men­tal re­sponse and sup­port the in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Mooni­lal al­so raised con­cern that the in­ci­dent may not be iso­lat­ed, sug­gest­ing it could form part of broad­er or­gan­ised ac­tiv­i­ty tar­get­ing state and util­i­ty in­fra­struc­ture. He ref­er­enced vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties across mul­ti­ple sec­tors, in­clud­ing en­er­gy in­stal­la­tions and pub­lic util­i­ties, and said the pat­tern would re­quire clos­er ex­am­i­na­tion by se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies.

He point­ed to re­cent in­ci­dents of van­dal­ism af­fect­ing na­tion­al in­fra­struc­ture, in­clud­ing re­port­ed ca­ble theft in­volv­ing the Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC), as well as on­go­ing po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to cop­per theft cas­es in South Trinidad, as part of what he de­scribed as a wider con­cern around in­fra­struc­ture se­cu­ri­ty.

Her­itage re­it­er­at­ed that it re­mains com­mit­ted to full re­me­di­a­tion of the af­fect­ed area, in­clud­ing on­go­ing con­tain­ment, re­cov­ery and en­vi­ron­men­tal mon­i­tor­ing ef­forts, and said it will con­tin­ue to pro­vide up­dates as the sit­u­a­tion de­vel­ops.