KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

For­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Stu­art Young has launched a scathing at­tack on Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries Dr Roodal Mooni­lal over his han­dling of the Bar­rack­pore oil leak, say­ing he feels “sor­ry” for him and ac­cus­ing him of be­ing “hap­less, in­com­pe­tent and com­plete­ly out of his depth” in in­ter­pret­ing what he in­sists was a rou­tine en­er­gy op­er­a­tion.

Young said what was be­ing pre­sent­ed as sus­pect­ed sab­o­tage was be­ing fun­da­men­tal­ly mis­read and dis­missed the in­ter­pre­ta­tion as po­lit­i­cal­ly dri­ven and tech­ni­cal­ly un­sound.

“I feel sor­ry for the in­di­vid­ual, but the task falls to us in the PNM to ed­u­cate not on­ly the in­di­vid­ual who is Min­is­ter Mooni­lal,” he said, re­ject­ing claims that the dam­aged pipeline re­flect­ed de­lib­er­ate in­ter­fer­ence.

The ex­change comes af­ter Mooni­lal called on Young to pub­licly con­demn what he de­scribed as a sus­pect­ed act of sab­o­tage in­volv­ing a Re­nais­sance En­er­gy-op­er­at­ed pipeline in Bar­rack­pore.

Mooni­lal said he had seen im­ages of the dam­aged in­fra­struc­ture and be­lieved the na­ture of the breach sug­gest­ed it was not ac­ci­den­tal, rais­ing con­cerns about pos­si­ble de­lib­er­ate in­ter­fer­ence with crit­i­cal en­er­gy as­sets. He al­so re­ferred to spec­u­la­tion cir­cu­lat­ing in the area link­ing the in­ci­dent to Op­po­si­tion fig­ures.

Young, how­ev­er, said that in­ter­pre­ta­tion was in­cor­rect and urged a re­view of the op­er­a­tional se­quence sur­round­ing the in­ci­dent.

He said a leak was first de­tect­ed in the area, af­ter which Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um per­son­nel were dis­patched to as­sess the pipeline. Ac­cord­ing to Young, the line was con­firmed to be de­pres­surised and a de­ci­sion was tak­en to re­move a sec­tion as part of stan­dard main­te­nance pro­ce­dures.

He said con­trac­tor Soogrim and Sons was en­gaged to car­ry out the work, which in­volved “mud plug­ging,” a method used in the en­er­gy in­dus­try to seal pipelines.

“If you don’t un­der­stand what that means, it is fre­quent­ly used in the en­er­gy in­dus­try with pipelines that are no longer in com­mis­sion.”

Young fur­ther claimed the in­ci­dent es­ca­lat­ed when the lease op­er­a­tor re­sumed pump­ing op­er­a­tions with­out full aware­ness of the ear­li­er in­ter­ven­tion, which he said may have dis­lodged the plug and trig­gered the spill.

He ar­gued that the se­quence of events point­ed to an op­er­a­tional fail­ure rather than sab­o­tage.

“So un­for­tu­nate­ly, the on­ly sab­o­tage... is the sab­o­tage to your con­tin­ued ca­reer that is ob­vi­ous­ly tak­ing place as the Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries.”

Ac­cord­ing to an ear­li­er re­port, emer­gency re­sponse teams were de­ployed af­ter a sec­tion of pipeline was found re­moved in Bar­rack­pore. Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um and Re­nais­sance En­er­gy re­spond­ed by de­ploy­ing con­tain­ment equip­ment and iso­lat­ing the line. Test­ing by CARIRI found air qual­i­ty to be gen­er­al­ly with­in ac­cept­able lim­its, al­though traces of hy­dro­car­bons were de­tect­ed in drainage chan­nels near the site.

In­ves­ti­ga­tions are on­go­ing, and au­thor­i­ties have not yet de­ter­mined whether the breach re­sult­ed from sab­o­tage, op­er­a­tional pro­ce­dures or an­oth­er tech­ni­cal fail­ure.