Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Ten­sion mount­ed out­side the Pointe-a-Pierre oil re­fin­ery yes­ter­day as ri­ot po­lice ap­pre­hend­ed a man for wear­ing a cam­ou­flage hat dur­ing a heat­ed protest by Petrotrin work­ers to stop the cap­ping of 65 oil wells in south­ern Trinidad.The wells, which the Min­istry of En­er­gy said were "un­pro­duc­tive and aban­doned," are be­ing capped to fa­cil­i­tate the $7.5 bil­lion San Fer­nan­do to Point Fortin High­way.How­ev­er, in a show of force, pres­i­dent gen­er­al of the Oil­fields Work­ers' Trade Union An­cel Ro­get mo­bilised work­ers from the re­fin­ery, ex­plo­ration and pro­duc­tion fields to show their dis­sat­is­fac­tion. The work­ers came from the fields of For­est Re­serve, Guayagua­yare, Pe­nal/Bar­rack­pore, Trin­mar and Point Fortin.

Dur­ing the protest, po­lice cau­tioned a man about his cam­ou­flage cap and even­tu­al­ly put him in a po­lice jeep, but an­gry work­ers con­verged, de­mand­ing his re­lease."All you not leav­ing here. This is our com­pound," one man shout­ed as the work­ers formed a hu­man bar­ri­cade in the car park.Ro­get, who was about to ad­dress the gath­er­ing, quick­ly in­ter­vened and the po­lice even­tu­al­ly re­leased the man.Ro­get said the work­ers came in peace to pro­tect the as­sets of the coun­try. He ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of de­priv­ing Petrotrin of ad­di­tion­al rev­enue by cap­ping pro­duc­tive wells."The Gov­ern­ment's in­ten­tion is to build this high­way come hell or high wa­ter. It can­not be said that in the pe­ri­od of high oil prices and de­clin­ing oil pro­duc­tion that they want to cap 65 wells," Ro­get said.

OW­TU protest over well cap­ping

Call­ing on Petrotrin pres­i­dent Khalid Has­sanali to pro­vide a seis­mic re­port of the south­ern re­gion, Ro­get said, "Where is the seis­mic re­port? Let us see that so we can walk and see for our­selves whether the wells are pro­duc­tive. We have to strug­gle to pro­tect our jobs."He added that while Petrotrin clos­es down wells, the com­pa­ny was con­tin­u­ing to im­port 100,000 bar­rels of oil per day. Lam­bast­ing Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar for mis­man­age­ment, Ro­get said, "Kam­la us­ing the he­li­copter to fly all about. Kam­la fly­ing by night, but you know what they say, birds fly high but they must come down to die."He added, "We can­not be­lieve a word that they are say­ing. What they do­ing does not make eco­nom­ic sense. We want to know the po­ten­tial loss of these wells. We want to ver­i­fy that every one of those wells is un­pro­duc­tive, be­cause we know oth­er­wise."

Ro­get al­so ac­cused Petrotrin of reneg­ing on its agree­ment on vari­able pay and called on all Petrotrin work­ers to join their strug­gle, say­ing work­ers had a du­ty to pro­tect the as­sets of their coun­try.Min­is­ter of En­er­gy Kevin Ram­nar­ine last week con­firmed that Petrotrin was paid $50 mil­lion to cap oil­wells.How­ev­er, a se­nior Petrotrin of­fi­cial said most of the wells were aban­doned.He said four out of 39 wells must be capped for the con­tro­ver­sial Mon De­sir to Debe phase and out of these, on­ly 50 bar­rels of oil were ob­tained per day.

The spokesman said it was not risky to build a high­way over capped wells.