Kevon Felmine

A day af­ter thieves cart­ed away pipelines which caused a mas­sive oil spill in Point Fortin, Petrotrin pres­i­dent Khalid Has­sanali said it was im­pos­si­ble for the com­pa­ny to se­cure all of its in­stal­la­tions around T&T.Has­sanali said Petrotrin's as­sets were too vast to have se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers post­ed every­where, al­though the com­pa­ny must con­tin­ue to be vig­i­lant about its se­cu­ri­ty.

Ad­mit­ting the oil spill could have a neg­a­tive im­pact on the en­vi­ron­ment, he gave the as­sur­ance that all dan­gers had been avert­ed, as crews had al­ready com­plet­ed mop­ping-up op­er­a­tions.Re­ports said around 1 am on Mon­day, thieves en­tered the un­se­cured Mount Pel­li­er Line Trans­fer Fa­cil­i­ty at North Trace, Cap-de-Ville, where they cut an eight-inch pipeline.

While they were re­mov­ing the line, it fell on­to a 12-inch line, caus­ing dam­age to a one-inch nip­ple which re­sult­ed in ap­prox­i­mate­ly 20 bar­rels of oil seep­ing in­to the sea.How­ev­er, a con­ser­v­a­tive es­ti­mate of the leak­age was ac­tu­al­ly be­tween 400 and 600 bar­rels, as the oil spill trav­elled sev­er­al miles west to Point Co­co Beach in Granville which is pop­u­lar swim­ming and fish­ing area.

Com­pa­ny of­fi­cials said the Mont­pel­li­er Line Trans­fer Fa­cil­i­ty trans­fers the oil com­ing from Trin­mar's off­shore plat­forms to the Trin­mar Tank Farm in Point Ligoure, Point Fortin, for pro­cess­ing.The source said news of the leak did not reach Trin­mar of­fi­cials un­til 9 am on Mon­day, leav­ing the oil to ooze for close to five hours.

One Point Co­co res­i­dent said she heard loud nois­es around 1 am that day and by 4 am, she was awak­ened by the over­pow­er­ing scent of the oil. When she walked on­to the beach at 7 am she saw oil on the wa­ter.A re­lease from Petrotrin yes­ter­day said the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA), the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy Af­fairs, the coast guard, and po­lice had been no­ti­fied.

The re­lease said: "Petrotrin mo­bilised its In­ci­dent Com­mand Team and the nec­es­sary ac­tions are be­ing put in­to place to ad­dress this sit­u­a­tion."Con­tain­ment, clean-up, in­ves­ti­ga­tions and thor­ough mon­i­tor­ing of the in­ci­dent will con­tin­ue," it said.De­spite warn­ings from Petrotrin to fish­er­men not to fish in the area, a few fish­ing ves­sels were seen float­ing around at Point Co­co Beach.

Around noon yes­ter­day, they left as clean-up crews be­gan pour­ing a chem­i­cal called Can­sorb in­to the wa­ter.Has­sanali said Can­sorb was an all-or­gan­ic, oil-on­ly sor­bent which ab­sorbs oil from the wa­ter, and was a mod­ern, en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly sub­stance.As the T&T Guardian team en­tered Point Co­co Beach, a fore­man made a phone call, say­ing: "We have an emer­gency down here...The me­dia has reached."

Has­sanali yes­ter­day ad­mit­ted the com­pa­ny had been plagued by ban­dits."Yes, these thefts have hap­pened to us fre­quent­ly, but it is im­pos­si­ble to man all lo­ca­tions as we have in­stal­la­tions all over the coun­try with ca­bles, pipelines and gen­er­a­tors," he said."We have a large land mass and large off­shore area to pa­trol and we have pa­trols both on land and off­shore.

"But we just have to con­tin­ue to be vig­i­lant with our se­cu­ri­ty," he said.Has­sanali said it was too ear­ly to de­ter­mine the cost of the leak or the im­pact on the en­vi­ron­ment.