Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Just three months shy of the one-year an­niver­sary of the dead­ly col­lapse of Well Ser­vices Rig 110, en­gi­neer­ing ex­perts say they are still no clos­er to de­ter­min­ing what caused the in­ci­dent on De­cem­ber 22.  

Riza Khan, vice pres­i­dent of In-Corr-Tech Ltd, one of the in­ves­ti­gat­ing bod­ies look­ing in­to the col­lapse—which claimed the life of rig work­er Pe­te Phillip, whose re­mains are yet to be re­cov­ered—says they are still wait­ing to gain ac­cess to the site. 

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia dur­ing the last of a three-day open house event as the com­pa­ny marked its 35th an­niver­sary on Fri­day, Khan, the head of en­gi­neer­ing and in­spec­tion, said there were five or six pos­si­ble caus­es for the rig’s col­lapse, but their in­ves­ti­ga­tion has been stymied by de­lays in ac­cess­ing the site.

He ex­plained, “Cer­tain tests and in­spec­tions that we ad­vised need to be done, we have not been able to ex­e­cute them as yet. We have some de­lays with re­spect to ac­cess­ing the site and with re­spect to the sur­veys to be done un­der­wa­ter and I think with re­spect to get­ting a barge to as­sist with that process. We need to ex­e­cute those tests, oth­er­wise the cause of this ac­ci­dent may re­main un­known.”

Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to con­tact of­fi­cials from Well Ser­vices Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny but was un­suc­cess­ful. The com­pa­ny had last is­sued a press re­lease on March 7 in­di­cat­ing that spe­cialised equip­ment was re­quired to re­sume re­cov­ery and sal­vage op­er­a­tions.

Guardian Me­dia was re­li­ably in­formed on Fri­day that a barge re­quired to car­ry out these op­er­a­tions had ar­rived in the coun­try re­cent­ly. 

Khan’s com­pa­ny al­so as­sist­ed in the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the 2022 Paria dri­ving tragedy that claimed the lives of four LM­CS em­ploy­ees.

Asked whether there were a high num­ber of ac­ci­dents with­in the oil and gas in­dus­try, Khan said he did not have the sta­tis­tics, but not­ed the in­dus­try is not plagued with safe­ty-re­lat­ed in­ci­dents, as there have been im­prove­ments over the years.

Not­ing that there is still room for im­prove­ment, he ad­vised com­pa­nies to fo­cus on ex­pand­ing their knowl­edge on safe­ty process stan­dards. 

“Things have changed from 25, 30 years ago to now. There are a lot more ad­vanced tech­niques and tools avail­able at their dis­pos­al that com­pa­nies should take ad­van­tage of, with the aim of im­proved process safe­ty man­age­ment and im­prov­ing the re­li­a­bil­i­ty of the plant, es­pe­cial­ly with age­ing as­sets.” 

With some com­pa­nies in the down­stream sec­tor fac­ing loss­es in rev­enue due to gas cur­tail­ment, he said they may not put as much ef­fort in­to in­spec­tion and main­te­nance of as­sets. He al­so re­it­er­at­ed his call for au­thor­i­ties to en­force reg­u­la­tions, mak­ing it manda­to­ry for op­er­a­tors to car­ry out cer­tain in­spec­tions and tests at plants.