Sascha?Wil­son

Even though Petrotrin work­ers be­gan re­turn­ing to work yes­ter­day, Oil­fields Work­ers' Trade Union (OW­TU)?pres­i­dent gen­er­al?An­cel Ro­get is warn­ing there will be no in­dus­tri­al peace un­til their is­sues are prop­er­ly re­solved. In a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Ro­get said there would on­ly be "par­tial restora­tion of nor­mal­cy" at the en­er­gy com­pa­ny.

Whether op­er­a­tions re­turn to full ca­pac­i­ty, he said, would de­pend on the out­come of a meet­ing the union has with?En­er­gy Min­is­ter Kevin?Ram­nar­ine at his Port-of-Spain of­fice to­day. "Un­less the is­sues are re­solved prop­er­ly and com­plete­ly there shall be no in­dus­tri­al peace and there­fore no sta­bil­i­ty in the op­er­a­tions and those things are ab­solute­ly nec­es­sary for Petrotrin to go for­ward," Ro­get said.

"The min­is­ter and board of di­rec­tors if they are in­ter­est­ed in Petrotrin they should come clean and re­move Petrotrin from the cor­rupt hands that they are poised to go in­to." In a re­lease yes­ter­day, Petrotrin said its ex­plo­ration and pro­duc­tion op­er­a­tions were al­most back to nor­mal and at Pointe-a-Pierre, ef­forts were be­ing made to restart some of the plants at the re­fin­ery and prod­ucts were be­ing dis­trib­uted from the bond.

OW­TU is call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to re­scind its de­ci­sion to grant a li­cence to a lo­cal op­er­a­tive of Bunkers In­ter­na­tion­al to run a ma­jor bunker­ing fa­cil­i­ty in T&T. Mean­while, there was a mad rush for gas yes­ter­day, re­sult­ing in sev­er­al gas pumps in south and cen­tral Trinidad run­ning dry. Checks with gas sta­tions in?San?Fer­nan­do,?Cal­i­for­nia, Cou­va, Mara­bel­la, Ma­yaro, Rio Claro, Fyz­abad and Point Fortin re­vealed that sev­er­al of them had no gas. Signs were post­ed up and at least one sta­tion was cor­doned off with cau­tion tape.

How­ev­er, the Na­tion­al Pe­tro­le­um Mar­ket­ing Com­pa­ny Ltd (NP) yes­ter­day is­sued a state­ment urg­ing the pub­lic not to pan­ic, as­sur­ing that there was no sup­ply dis­rup­tion. It said fu­el de­liv­er­ies had been made to ser­vice sta­tions in north and along the East-West Cor­ri­dor from its Sea Lots com­pound.