Kevon Felmine

In the af­ter­math of 2014's de­struc­tive oil spills, pub­lic and pri­vate en­er­gy com­pa­nies are be­ing schooled by US con­sult­ing com­pa­ny Mat­ti­son Jax­on on deal­ing with in­dus­tri­al and en­vi­ron­men­tal dis­as­ters.

How­ev­er, En­er­gy and En­er­gy Af­fairs Min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine said the four day work­shop on In­ci­dent Com­mand Sys­tems (ICS), or­gan­ised by his min­istry, had noth­ing to do with Petrotrin's ma­jor spillages in­to the Gulf of Paria in De­cem­ber 2013 and the Guaracara Riv­er last Au­gust.

He said the Fed­er­al Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency (FE­MA) ap­proved work­shop was a re­quire­ment of the Na­tion­al Oil Spill Con­tin­gency Plan aimed at bring­ing en­er­gy com­pa­nies up to in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards.

Speak­ing at the launch of the work­shop yes­ter­day at Petrotrin's Staff Club at its Pointe-a-Pierre Re­fin­ery, the min­is­ter ex­plained that ICS was a uni­formed re­port­ing sys­tem used in in­ci­dents such as oil spills and ma­jor ac­ci­dents. He said the train­ing would al­low com­pa­nies to ef­fi­cient­ly man­age those emer­gen­cies.

"The course is be­ing at­tend­ed by state en­ter­pris­es, min­istries and the pri­vate sec­tor, and we see it as part of a thrust of the min­istry in 2015, in ad­di­tion to our na­tion­al fa­cil­i­ties au­dit of the en­er­gy sec­tor to strength­en the over­all Health Safe­ty and En­vi­ron­ment side of the busi­ness," he said.

"It is an in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dard and it is a stan­dard we want to have in­tro­duced to Trinidad and To­ba­go for bet­ter man­age­ment of in­ci­dent and ac­ci­dents."

The course is be­ing fa­cil­i­tat­ed by Mat­ti­son Jax­on's CEO Joyce M Moyes and in­clud­ed par­tic­i­pants from Petrotrin, Rep­sol, bpTT, Na­tion­al Pe­tro­le­um, EOS Re­sources, Coast Guard, the Mar­itime Di­vi­sion of the Min­istry of Trans­port, En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty and Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Health and Safe­ty Au­thor­i­ty.