An­ge­lo Bisses­sars­ingh

Tabaquite, a sleepy co­coa belt vil­lage, in the ear­ly 1900s was to have a unique place in Trinidad's oil his­to­ry as well as British mil­i­tary his­to­ry.

A re­port for­ward­ed to British in­dus­tri­al­ist Alexan­der Duck­ham from his ge­ol­o­gist in Trinidad con­firmed the pres­ence of ex­ten­sive oil de­posits. This doc­u­ment gave Duck­ham the con­fi­dence he need­ed to cap­i­talise a new com­pa­ny to the tune of 50,000 pounds ster­ling.

Trinidad Cen­tral Oil­fields was the re­sult in 1911 and leas­es were ob­tained for a large par­cel of Crown lands in the Tabaquite area. The pres­ence of the Bras­so-Ca­paro line of the Trinidad Gov­ern­ment Rail­way gave an added mo­ti­va­tion to the oil­men.

Ini­tial re­turns were pos­i­tive and based on the re­ports sent, the First Lord of the Ad­mi­ral­ty, Win­ston Churchill, de­cid­ed to con­vert the British Navy's fleet from coal fu­el to oil. There was no pipeline sys­tem at the Tabaquite op­er­a­tions and oil was di­rect­ed from the wells through earth­en drains in­to a large pit or sump.

Tabaquite wells pro­duced much nat­ur­al gas as well as light crude and in 1912, one of the wells ig­nit­ed send­ing a flash flood of burn­ing oil down­hill. Five men who were mon­i­tor­ing the flow to the sump we killed when the flam­ing tide over­took them. Crude was ini­tial­ly ex­port­ed in bar­rels us­ing rail­way flat­cars to Port-of-Spain where they were shipped to the Duck­ham's plant in Lon­don for re­fin­ing.

In 1914 ap­pli­ca­tions were made for a re­fin­ery at Tabaquite which was com­plet­ed a year lat­er. The plant dis­tilled sev­er­al grades of fu­el for lo­cal con­sump­tion. Kerosene (al­so called 'pitch oil' since it was first dis­tilled near the Pitch Lake) was made and this was an im­por­tant prod­uct since, at the time, there was no elec­tric pow­er in the is­land out­side of Port-of-Spain.

The kerosene was pack­aged at a small can­nery near the re­fin­ery and thus the com­mon­ly known "pitch-oil tin" came in­to use. A high grade of petrol was al­so man­u­fac­tured which was re­tailed in met­al drums in Port-of-Spain un­der the brand TRI­CEN­TROL. It was pre­ferred by mo­torists since it left few­er car­bon de­posits on ve­hi­cle en­gine parts and thus re­duced the need for clean­ing of valves and cylin­der heads.

Prob­lems be­gan to crop up with the rail­way au­thor­i­ties re­gard­ing the re­quests from oil­field man­age­ment for the use of large Amer­i­can 40-tonne tankers on its lines as op­posed to the small­er ten-ton British ones that had been in ser­vice up to 1915. This com­bined with in­creased out­put led Trinidad Cen­tral Oil­fields to pur­sue the ship­ping of oil from its own coastal port via a pipeline. Clax­ton Bay, over 20 miles to the south­west, was se­lect­ed as the ter­mi­nus and a se­ries of mas­sive iron tanks ca­pa­ble of stor­ing more than 14 thou­sand tonnes of oil were con­struct­ed there.

Even in the Unites States, there were no pipelines at the time of this length for tran­sit of light crude which made the Tabaquite-Clax­ton Bay tra­jec­to­ry a world first. Over hills and flat lands it went and a por­tion rest­ed on the sea bed at the ter­mi­nus since there was not enough deep wa­ter to per­mit oil tankers to draw near the shore.

A long iron jet­ty, con­struct­ed in the 1880s for use of sug­ar es­tates, be­came the load­ing point for oil. The crude ex­port­ed from Clax­ton Bay made its way to Lon­don where Alexan­der Duck­ham pro­duced a su­pe­ri­or grade of mo­tor lu­bri­cant, as well as avi­a­tion spir­it for the new­ly-formed Roy­al Air force which was formed near the end of World War I (1914-18). Such had been the im­por­tance of ma­rine and avi­a­tion fu­el from Duck­ham's, that sev­er­al vis­its from Ad­mi­ral­ty of­fi­cials were made to Trinidad in or­der to has­ten sup­plies.

Duck­ham him­self was a keen pi­lot and one of the pi­o­neers of avi­a­tion in Britain.

Out­put at Tabaquite fell steeply in the years fol­low­ing 1919. This had been feared since the ear­ly days since the ge­o­log­i­cal re­ports in­di­cat­ed the de­posits were shal­low in depth and eas­i­ly drilled but not near­ly as ex­ten­sive as those in the south­west. Trinidad Cen­tral Oil­fields had in­cor­po­rat­ed small­er oil leas­es in Guapo, Bar­rack­pore and even Ma­yaro, but the pend­ing ex­haus­tion of the main Tabaquite field was im­mi­nent.

In 1939 Trinidad Cen­tral Oil­fields ceased to ex­ist, with its re­main­ing as­sets be­ing ac­quired by Unit­ed British Oil­felds Trinidad (UBOT). Alexan­der Duck­ham died in 1945 and the com­pa­ny he found­ed in 1899 man­aged to sol­dier on as a mak­er of lu­bri­cants un­til 1968 un­der his son Jack, when it was as­sim­i­lat­ed by BP and the Duck­ham's brand van­ished in­to his­to­ry.