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Saturday, July 26, 2025

Busy Christmas for foreign experts

by

20131224

The Gov­ern­ment and in­ter­na­tion­al oil spill ex­perts will be work­ing through the Christ­mas hol­i­days to clean up the oil spill in La Brea and oth­er ar­eas of the south­ern penin­su­la.Four in­ter­na­tion­al spe­cial­ists and two car­go planes filled with equip­ment ar­rived yes­ter­day to as­sist with the clean-up of five oil spills last week in that area.

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine made the an­nounce­ment yes­ter­day dur­ing a post-Cab­i­net press brief­ing at the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, St Clair.He said he would meet with the ex­perts to­day and work would be­gin im­me­di­ate­ly.Ram­nar­ine said mem­bers of the com­pa­ny, Oil Spill Re­sponse, will be as­sist­ing with the clean-up in the La Brea area and oth­er parts of the south­west­ern penin­su­la.

Two of the ex­perts are from the Unit­ed States and two are from the Unit­ed King­dom.He said the equip­ment, which in­clud­ed skim­mers and booms, would be tak­en by a con­voy of trucks to the Point Fortin and La Brea com­mu­ni­ties for even­tu­al use in the beach clean-up.Booms are used to pre­vent spills from spread­ing to oth­er ar­eas and skim­mers trap oil on the sur­face of the ocean.

Ram­nar­ine said the ex­er­cise, pre­vi­ous­ly es­ti­mat­ed to take a month to com­plete, may now take less time due to the for­eign ex­per­tise.He al­so re­vealed that a com­mit­tee, chaired by En­vi­ron­ment Min­is­ter Gan­ga Singh, and in­clud­ing Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Gary Grif­fith and him­self had been es­tab­lished to over­see clean-up ac­tiv­i­ties on the penin­su­la and launch an in­de­pen­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the root cause of the spills. He said he ex­pect­ed a pre­lim­i­nary re­port on the spills by the end of next month.

Se­cu­ri­ty for en­er­gy sec­tor

Ram­nar­ine said Cab­i­net al­so had dis­cussed yes­ter­day the se­cu­ri­ty arrange­ments of the en­er­gy sec­tor and not­ed its vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty."The Cab­i­net recog­nis­es the vi­tal im­por­tance of the en­er­gy sec­tor to the econ­o­my of T&T and we took note of the pos­si­ble vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty of key as­sets, not just oil as­sets but trans­porta­tion and pro­duc­tion as­sets which are lo­cat­ed through­out T&T."

He said Grif­fith was asked to brief Cab­i­net next week on the cur­rent state of se­cu­ri­ty arrange­ments for the en­er­gy sec­tor and a re­port would sub­se­quent­ly be pre­sent­ed to the Cab­i­net with rec­om­men­da­tions on how se­cu­ri­ty could be im­proved.A re­lease yes­ter­day from the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter an­nounced that it was de­cid­ed at yes­ter­day's meet­ing of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil (NSC) to in­crease se­cu­ri­ty around in­stal­la­tions in the en­er­gy sec­tor, both on land and at sea.

"The NSC got an up­date on the oil spill and while an in­ves­ti­ga­tion is be­ing un­der­tak­en by Petrotrin, Gov­ern­ment has de­cid­ed to pro­tect its fa­cil­i­ties with­in the en­er­gy sec­tor."Stricter se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures will be in place at all en­er­gy in­stal­la­tions, and ac­cess won't be as easy as be­fore," the re­lease said.Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is ex­pect­ed to tour the ar­eas af­fect­ed by the oil spill to­day.

Res­i­dents in the af­fect­ed ar­eas have been warned by Petrotrin of­fi­cials not to cook, as light­ing flames could re­sult in ex­plo­sions.Ram­nar­ine said the is­sue of com­pen­sa­tion for res­i­dents was al­so still be­ing dis­cussed but Petrotrin had al­ready dis­cussed a $2,000-per-day com­pen­sa­tion plan for fish­er­men.


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