Sascha Wil­son

Sev­er­al Petrotrin em­ploy­ees have been sus­pend­ed in con­nec­tion with their in­volve­ment in the first oil spill on De­cem­ber 17 near the com­pa­ny's Pointe-a-Pierre port.Cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er Gillian Fri­day con­firmed that dur­ing a press con­fer­ence at Petrotrin's Learn­ing Re­source Cen­tre, Pointe-a-Pierre, yes­ter­day.There have been a to­tal of 11 oil spills over the past three weeks, ad­verse­ly af­fect­ing res­i­dents and the en­vi­ron­ment along the south­west­ern penin­su­la.The com­pa­ny has claimed that some of the spills were acts of sab­o­tage.Re­spond­ing to a ques­tion on re­ports that eight em­ploy­ees were ei­ther sus­pend­ed or fired in con­nec­tion with the oil spills, Fri­day said sev­er­al work­ers were sus­pend­ed yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, but she could not say how many.

How­ev­er, she said, those work­ers were on du­ty at the port and ma­rine sec­tion in Pointe-a-Pierre when the first oil spill took place."I can't give you num­bers be­cause it is on­go­ing but they were work­ing in the area of the port and ma­rine at Pointe-a-Pierre, load­ing and re­ceiv­ing fu­el on­to the barge."How­ev­er, se­nior man­ag­er, mar­ket­ing and trad­ing Er­rol Baldeo said so far their in­ves­ti­ga­tions had not un­earthed any ev­i­dence of sab­o­tage re­gard­ing the first spill.Asked then on what grounds the work­ers were sus­pend­ed, he ex­plained that there was a process to fol­low."Ac­tion may be tak­en to sus­pend per­sons who may have been on du­ty at the time, so that there is no chance that in­for­ma­tion can be in­ter­fered with. The oth­er form of sus­pen­sion is if some­one is found cul­pa­ble but that is at the end of an in­ves­ti­ga­tion," Baldeo said.Fri­day made it clear that the work­ers were not sus­pend­ed be­cause they were found li­able but to fa­cil­i­tate the in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Mean­while, Petrotrin has not yet iden­ti­fied the source or sources of the spills.Stephen Awah, se­nior man­ag­er, pro­duc­tion op­er­a­tions, said so far 2,000 bar­rels of oil had been col­lect­ed dur­ing clean up op­er­a­tions along the south­west­ern penin­su­la.In an im­me­di­ate re­sponse yes­ter­day, Oil­fields Work­ers' Trade Union pres­i­dent gen­er­al An­cel Ro­get said the sus­pend­ed work­ers were be­ing used as scape­goats.In a tele­phone in­ter­view, he said he did not have the full de­tails on the mat­ter.The T&T Guardian was al­so giv­en a fig­ure of six em­ploy­ees, but while Ro­get could not con­firm that, he said he un­der­stood "low­er lev­el" em­ploy­ees were sus­pend­ed.He added: "It is the union po­si­tion that the com­pa­ny is still pro­tect­ing those per­sons in high­er man­age­ment that are re­spon­si­ble. If any­body is to be sus­pend­ed it has to be the su­per­in­ten­dents and those per­sons in charge of the ports."All the re­ports and rec­om­men­da­tions sug­gest that the lines ought to have been changed out. Those em­ploy­ees are not in charge of bud­get­ing and chang­ing out lines, those in man­age­ment are re­spon­si­ble for that."They are just scape­goats to cov­er their (man­age­ment) own slack in­ef­fi­cien­cy at the lev­el of man­age­ment. We await with bat­ed breath to see when they will be­gin to sus­pend the right per­sons."He said the com­pa­ny was try­ing to pro­tect man­age­ment.

Protests af­fect clean-up

Fri­day al­so yes­ter­day ap­pealed to La Brea res­i­dents and fish­er­men not to en­gage in protest ac­tion. She said a re­cent three-day protest ac­tion by res­i­dents had caused a set­back in clean-up op­er­a­tions in the area. Fri­day ap­pealed to res­i­dents to have di­a­logue with Petrotrin in­stead of protest­ing.Awah said work along beach­es in Ce­dros had been com­plet­ed and clean-up op­er­a­tions in La Brea was about 80 per cent com­plete.De­scrib­ing the sit­u­a­tion as a cri­sis, Fri­day said it was a na­tion­al prob­lem and Petrotrin's re­sponse team was on the ground work­ing 24/7. She said the team had to be con­grat­u­lat­ed for the work it was do­ing.Re­spond­ing to re­ports that res­i­dents were un­able to send their chil­dren to school yes­ter­day be­cause some were ill and their par­ents were un­able to earn a liv­ing over the past two weeks, Fri­day said last Fri­day the com­pa­ny had giv­en out school­bags, lunch bags, school­books and snacks to 100 chil­dren.She said a med­ical team was al­so sta­tioned at the com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre and res­i­dents could al­so vis­it Petrotrin's med­ical fa­cil­i­ty. Told that res­i­dents claimed they were be­ing turned away at the med­ical fa­cil­i­ty, Awah said he al­so re­ceived that re­port and an in­ves­ti­ga­tion has been launched.Thus far, Fri­day said, over 115 res­i­dents had been hired to as­sist in clean-up op­er­a­tions.In ad­di­tion, she said the com­pa­ny had signed off on com­pen­sa­tion for some fish­er­folk, while ne­go­ti­a­tions were on­go­ing for oth­ers.Re­gard­ing the im­pact on the Ota­heite man­grove and the wildlife, Awah said the com­pa­ny was work­ing with En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) on a com­pre­hen­sive plan in terms of re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion.

Re­port in­cor­rect

A pre­lim­i­nary re­port fol­low­ing an in­ves­ti­ga­tion com­mis­sioned by state-owned Petrotrin, which stat­ed that a failed pipeline was be­hind the De­cem­ber 17 oil leak at Pointe-a-Pierre, as it may not have un­der­gone ma­jor in­spec­tions for over 17 years, is er­ro­neous, Fri­day al­so said yes­ter­day.The re­port, which was con­duct­ed by a pan­el of Petrotrin em­ploy­ees, was sub­mit­ted to Petrotrin of­fi­cials on De­cem­ber 24 and one of its con­clu­sions was that poor main­te­nence pro­to­col may have led to the de­te­ri­o­ra­tion of the line.But com­ment­ing on the con­clu­sion in re­spect of the pipeline yes­ter­day, Fri­day said "that state­ment was in­ac­cu­rate."Baldeo said the line in ques­tion, #10, was in­spect­ed in 2006 and 2009 and ad­di­tion­al work was done in 2011 and 2013."In fact, we do reg­u­lar su­per­vi­so­ry work on those lines to check those lines so that in­for­ma­tion is in­cor­rect."Fri­day said the pur­pose of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion was to gath­er ev­i­dence, adding the re­port was priv­i­leged and con­fi­den­tial.