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Thursday, July 10, 2025

Roget puts blame on Petrotrin bosses

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20131222

Pres­i­dent gen­er­al of the Oil­fields Work­ers' Trade Union (OW­TU) An­cel Ro­get says heads must roll at Petrotrin for the "en­vi­ron­men­tal dis­as­ter" caused by the oil spill which con­tin­ued to rav­age the south-west­ern coast­line of T&T yes­ter­day.Ad­dress­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence at OW­TU head­quar­ters, Para­mount Build­ing, Cir­cu­lar Road, San Fer­nan­do, yes­ter­day, Ro­get said Petrotrin has failed to im­ple­ment a prop­er emer­gency re­sponse to the dis­as­ter.

"To date, the oil spill in La Brea has not been con­tained. They have not iden­ti­fied the source of that leak...the en­tire coast­line com­mu­ni­ty is at risk be­cause their con­tin­gency plan is woe­ful­ly in­ad­e­quate," Ro­get said.The oil spill be­gan on Tues­day at Pointe-a-Pierre when a ten-inch main rup­tured. Petrotrin said that oil spill was con­tained. How­ev­er, the com­pa­ny said since then there were four sep­a­rate spills.

The ma­jor spill, which has dev­as­tat­ed Car­rat and Queen's Beach in La Brea, is still caus­ing dam­age to the coast­line and af­fect­ing res­i­dents. Petrotrin said it was yet to de­ter­mine the source of that spill.Ro­get said: "It is a ma­jor en­vi­ron­men­tal dis­as­ter tak­ing place there (La Brea) and they do not want to take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. They are the own­ers of the fields, they are cul­pa­ble."

Yes­ter­day, Ro­get, who was flanked by OW­TU ex­ec­u­tives, came to the de­fence of Petrotrin em­ploy­ees af­ter the state-run oil com­pa­ny claimed that sab­o­tage was be­hind the fre­quen­cy of oil spills."We do not con­cur with the com­pa­ny's of­fer­ing of the ex­cuse that it is some kind of sab­o­tage or oth­er­wise," he said."We want to put on the ta­ble clear­ly what we be­lieve those in­ci­dents to be; we want to say there is a mas­sive cov­er-up of the Petrotrin man­age­ment to shield their friends, the lease op­er­a­tors."Do not blame the work­ers."

What the coun­try was see­ing at La Brea and along the coast­line, Ro­get said, was the re­sult of Petrotrin's lack of mon­i­tor­ing of lease op­er­a­tors.Ro­get said lease op­er­a­tors had been al­lowed to work "with­out scruti­ny, mon­i­tor­ing and un­reg­u­lat­ed."

"We are say­ing they must not es­cape scruti­ny and mon­i­tor­ing and a thor­ough in­ves­ti­ga­tion to de­ter­mine whether they are cul­pa­ble in this re­gard al­so," he said.He added that the OW­TU had con­demned the lev­el of poor health, safe­ty and en­vi­ron­ment stan­dards at the lev­el of lease op­er­a­tors.The OW­TU boss said the blame for the oil "fi­as­co" should be laid at Petrotrin man­age­ment's feet for re­duc­ing se­cu­ri­ty at field op­er­a­tions, both off­shore and on­shore.

He said: "Petrotrin is short by some 273 se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers. In Trin­mar, you have 70 se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers...Short, un­der­staffed in the se­cu­ri­ty arrange­ments to take care of very mul­ti-bil­lion as­sets to en­sure oil and gas is pro­tect­ed."Ro­get said the union had com­plained about the lack of se­cu­ri­ty on nu­mer­ous oc­ca­sions and noth­ing had been done.

He said: "Work­ers were at­tacked while on du­ty on morn­ing shifts and even broad day­light, robbed on the job. Pump­ing jacks and elec­tri­cal ca­bles cut and stolen from fields. All of these would have oc­curred be­cause the com­pa­ny re­moved the lev­el of se­cu­ri­ty and it is open sea­son for the ban­dits."Ro­get said the union will be­gin an in­de­pen­dent as­sess­ment of the amount of oil lost and the cost to Petrotrin.


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