Resh­ma Ra­goonath

Em­ploy­ees at At­lantic LNG, Point Fortin, had to be evac­u­at­ed yes­ter­day af­ter a leak was dis­cov­ered in one of the plant's tanks. At­lantic LNG's com­mu­ni­ca­tions spe­cial­ist, Bill­son Hains­ley con­firmed the in­ci­dent. How­ev­er, he as­sured the sit­u­a­tion was un­der con­trol and work had re­sumed at the plant.

Re­ports reach­ing the T&T Guardian in­di­cat­ed that short­ly af­ter lunch, a leak was dis­cov­ered at At­lantic's Tank "C" and em­ploy­ees had to be evac­u­at­ed to the com­pa­ny's ad­min­is­tra­tive of­fice, Clifton Hill, Point Fortin. Half an hour lat­er, all oth­er em­ploy­ees on the plant were evac­u­at­ed and made to wait un­der a tent as checks were car­ried out on the site. They com­plained that at train one, the alarm sys­tem failed and work­ers were left won­der­ing where was the muster point.

An At­lantic LNG re­lease is­sued last evening stat­ed: "At ap­prox­i­mate­ly 1.15 pm yes­ter­day at At­lantic's Point Fortin fa­cil­i­ty, two pres­sure safe­ty valves lift­ed on Tank C, re­sult­ing in a tem­po­rary re­lease of gas to at­mos­phere, which dis­si­pat­ed short­ly af­ter. The valves op­er­at­ed as per de­sign.

"The re­lease caused no harm to per­son­nel or equip­ment, and At­lantic's fa­cil­i­ty con­tin­ues nor­mal op­er­a­tions," the re­lease said. A tech­ni­cal team, the re­lease stat­ed, is on site "cur­rent­ly in­ves­ti­gat­ing the cause of the valves lift­ing." The re­lease stat­ed that "as a pre­cau­tion­ary mea­sure, per­son­nel were evac­u­at­ed from the ad­ja­cent GE Tur­bine main­te­nance work­shop, and At­lantic tech­ni­cal per­son­nel im­me­di­ate­ly rec­ti­fied the sit­u­a­tion." The all-clear was giv­en for staff to re­sume work ac­tiv­i­ties, the re­lease added.