KEVON FELMINE

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

The Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice (MSJ) is call­ing on Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries Stu­art Young to let the coun­try know what caused the April 2021 ex­plo­sion at Ni­Quan En­er­gy Trinidad Ltd.Dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, MSJ leader David Ab­du­lah re­spond­ed to a news­pa­per re­port high­light­ing that the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries had ap­proved the restart of Ni­Quan’s gas-to-liq­uids plant in Point-a-Pierre.

Ab­du­lah said fol­low­ing the ex­plo­sion, for­mer Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy Af­fairs Franklin Khan promised to make the find­ings of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the ex­plo­sion pub­lic.
“Min­is­ter Khan made a clear, ex­plic­it state­ment. It was a de­fin­i­tive state­ment that the in­ves­ti­gat­ing com­mit­tee that he set up as min­is­ter to look in­to the ex­plo­sion and to make rec­om­men­da­tions and, of course, ar­rive at find­ings as to the cause of the ex­plo­sion, that that re­port would be made pub­lic,” Ab­du­lah said.
A year and a half lat­er, Ab­du­lah said the plant is restart­ing with­out any dis­cus­sion with the Mara­bel­la com­mu­ni­ty bor­der­ing the Guaracara Re­fin­ing Com­pa­ny, which hous­es Ni­Quan.

It was the com­mu­ni­ty who woke up to their homes shak­ing on April 7, 2021, af­ter its hy­dro­c­rack­er failed, re­sult­ing in a blowout. Res­i­dents re­port­ed shat­tered glass­es and cracks in their homes from the im­pact felt miles away.
Ab­du­lah vis­it­ed the com­mu­ni­ty in Mara­bel­la to high­light that Ni­Quan nev­er met with the res­i­dents. He said Ni­Quan com­mu­ni­ty re­la­tions were poor.
The min­istry as­signed a tech­ni­cal team to es­tab­lish the facts of the in­ci­dent by in­ves­ti­gat­ing the fac­tors con­tribut­ing to the ex­plo­sion. The tech­ni­cal team had to re­view the ad­e­qua­cy of ex­ist­ing con­trols and pro­ce­dures and rec­om­mend pro­to­cols to re­duce risks and pre­vent re­cur­rences.
It in­clud­ed act­ing head of the Pe­tro­le­um Op­er­a­tions Man­age­ment Di­vi­sion Craig Boodoo, act­ing Se­nior Chem­i­cal En­gi­neer Yashi Car­ring­ton, Me­chan­i­cal En­gi­neer II Sean Ma­habir, Pe­tro­le­um In­spec­tor III Omat­tee Mathu­ra, Me­chan­i­cal En­gi­neer Neisha Dip­nar­ine and Chem­i­cal En­gi­neer Shazil Yarsien.
The team had to pre­pare a re­port and sub­mit it to Khan and oth­er key stake­hold­ers.

Al­though Khan died 10 days lat­er, Ab­du­lah said he made the state­ment to pub­li­cise the tech­ni­cal team’s re­port as a gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tive. There­fore, he said Young can­not claim that he did not make that promise to the peo­ple.

Ab­du­lah said it was an­oth­er lack of trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty by the Dr Kei­th Row­ley-led PNM.

“Lay in the pub­lic’s sphere the re­port of that in­ves­ti­gat­ing com­mit­tee. We must know what caused the ac­ci­dent, what things went wrong, what Ni­Quan did wrong that caused the ac­ci­dent and what steps, there­fore, it had to take to en­sure that a sim­i­lar in­stance does not hap­pen again.”

With the pre­sen­ta­tion of the 2022/23 Na­tion­al Bud­get on Sep­tem­ber 26, the MSJ al­so wants the Gov­ern­ment to state spe­cif­ic time­lines for de­liv­er­ables.

Ab­du­lah said the scan­ners at the ports are not work­ing. With re­ports that il­le­gal weapons and drugs come through le­gal ports, he said the Gov­ern­ment must spend mon­ey to en­sure those scan­ners are work­ing again in the next few months to re­duce the sup­ply of firearms and am­mu­ni­tion reach­ing the hands of crim­i­nals.