Sascha Wil­son

Hours af­ter a work­er was in­jured in a fire at state-owned Petrotrin, re-elect­ed OW­TU pres­i­dent gen­er­al An­cel Ro­get said all the fires and ac­ci­dents at Petrotrin from since last year were due to man­age­ment's in­ef­fi­cien­cies. He called for the re­moval of Petrotrin's chair­man Lind­say Gillette and the HSE man­ag­er, Va­lerie Quan-Vie. The work­er, whose name was not dis­closed, was said to have sus­tained mi­nor in­juries in­flict­ed by steam and was treat­ed and dis­charged from the com­pa­ny's Au­gus­tus Long Hos­pi­tal. Speak­ing with re­porters out­side the Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery, new­ly-ap­point­ed En­er­gy Min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine gave the as­sur­ance that they will treat with any is­sues re­lat­ing to Petrotrin's man­age­ment. Ram­nar­ine said Petrotrin had ap­point­ed two in­ves­ti­ga­tion teams to probe the in­ci­dent and they ex­pect to re­ceive ini­tial re­ports in 24 hours.

It was around 9 am that Petrotrin's sirens were sound­ed when op­er­at­ing per­son­nel at No 2 Hy­dro-Treat­ing Unit spot­ted fire on two of the over­head air-cooled heat ex­chang­ers. Work­ers were evac­u­at­ed and with­in ten min­utes the fire was brought un­der con­trol. Speak­ing with re­porters af­ter both he and En­vi­ron­ment Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal met with se­nior Petrotrin of­fi­cials, Ram­nar­ine said: "From what they have told us, it seems that there was a pow­er loss in the re­fin­ery and that pow­er loss caused the cool­ing fans in the HTU to stop work­ing and of course that caused the tem­per­a­ture to in­crease which led to the fire."

Asked what caused the out­age, Ram­nar­ine said he did not know but elec­tri­cal work was be­ing con­duct­ed in the re­fin­ery. He said he was told that it was a medi­um sized fire. Ram­nar­ine said he did not think there would be any se­ri­ous dis­rup­tion in op­er­a­tions since the unit was sched­uled for a rou­tine shut­down at the end of Ju­ly that would last 42 days. How­ev­er, in light of the in­ci­dent, the shut­down would be brought for­ward, he said. Asked to re­spond to OW­TU's claim that the fire was as a re­sult of in­ef­fi­cien­cies at the lev­el of Petrotrin's man­age­ment, Ram­nar­ine said: "The ac­ci­dent re­ports that will be gen­er­at­ed by the com­mit­tee will al­low us to have an idea as to if there were any de­fi­cien­cies at the lev­el of man­age­ment and if there are de­fi­cien­cies at the lev­el of man­age­ment we will treat with it."

'Petrotrin can still pro­vide re­li­able sup­ply to cus­tomers'

Petrotrin's man­ag­er Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Gillian Fri­day, in a me­dia re­lease, said the in­ves­ti­ga­tion team com­pris­es se­nior com­pa­ny and OW­TU of­fi­cials. She said Petrotrin's Fire De­part­ment re­spond­ed while the com­pa­ny's emer­gency plan was ac­ti­vat­ed, and the fire was brought un­der con­trol by 10 am.

While the San Fer­nan­do Fire Ser­vices re­spond­ed, Fri­day said they were not re­quired to go in­to ac­tion. She fur­ther stat­ed that the in­ci­dent had not af­fect­ed the com­pa­ny's abil­i­ty to pro­vide a re­li­able sup­ply of prod­ucts to its cus­tomers.