Energy Minister Nicole Olivierre said yesterday that she is concerned about the state of T&T's oil infrastructure in T&T and has mandated state-owned Petrotrin to improve its pipeline inspection regime so oil spills can be more quickly detected.
The minister was commenting on the latest deep sea oil leak to be reported in just the past two days. It sprung up in the Soldado Fields on Monday, about four miles from shore. The six inch line near Platform 1 and 3 was isolated and clamped but it is not yet known how much oil had spilled into the sea.
The minister, who spoke with reporters following the opening of the refurbished La Brea Museum yesterday, said money will be allocated in the next fiscal year to assist in refurbishing aged energy infrastructure.
"Last year we did a facilities audit and we looked at the state of asset integrity in all oil and gas facilities but we are aware of the challenges faced by Petrotrin in maintaining our infrastructure," Olivierre said.
"We have to be aware that there are wells in that marine field which are well over 50 years old. Some of them Petrotrin would have inherited from other predecessor companies, so we don't have full information on all of them with regard to proper rehabilitation."
Olivierre said Petrotrin has a preventative maintenence programme in place.
"They are inspecting the lines and trying to increase their response time, so once there is reported sightings of oil spills on the water, they immediately mobilise an oil spill containment team and will go to the site and try to contain the spill. They will also send down divers to examine the line to identify the source of the leak so that it could be quickly clamped," she said.
Asked whether any allocations will be made in the next budget for replacement of old infrastructure, Olivierre said: "We recognise that it will take a great deal of capital investment to replace all those lines and it is impacting on oil production from the Trinmar area."
She said the Trinmar acreage is a prolific oil producer but is not up to capacity because of poor physical infrastructure.
"The cost of replacing all of those lines is insurmountable but we are working with Petrotrin and looking for ways in the new fiscal term to do some of that replacement works so we will reduce the incidents of the oil spillage," she said.
Given the current constraints with oil prices and the fall in energy production, Olivierre said there is only so much Government can do.
"I have asked Petrotrin to improve their pipeline inspection regime so at least we can detect spills before they come to surface and spread to a large area. We will do as much as we can with the resources we have. We will also increase inspection frequency which will mitigate the spread of spillages," she said.
Petrotrin said in a statement that at around 1.17 pm on Monday, the company was alerted to the presence of oil on the surface in close proximity to one of its offshore Trinmar platforms. Operations and health safety and environment (HSE) personnel responded and began containment and clean-up efforts and the source of the spill was identified and isolated.
Ministry of Energy, the Environment Management Agency (EMA) and other regulatory agencies were later informed.
Last month, a Petrotrin discharge line from an oil to shore line which pumps crude from Platform 17 to Trinmar's tank farm developed a leak about four miles from shore.
Two more leaks were plugged close to Trinmar's S-20 platform earlier this year. Those spills caused a shutdown of fishing operations in the villages of Bamboo, Bonasse, St Marie, Bois Bourg, Granville, Icacos and Fullerton.