Asha Javeed

Lead Ed­i­tor In­ves­ti­ga­tions

asha.javeed@guardian.co.tt

De­spite the death of a work­er on its plant by fire burns, Ni­Quan En­er­gy Trinidad Lim­it­ed (Ni­Quan) says there “was min­i­mal dam­age” to that part their fa­cil­i­ty.

And de­spite two in­dus­tri­al ac­ci­dents—an ex­plo­sion and a fa­tal­i­ty—in the space of two years, the com­pa­ny says it fol­lowed all Health, Safe­ty, Se­cu­ri­ty & En­vi­ron­ment (HSSE) and Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Ad­min­is­tra­tion (OS­HA) stan­dards.

“The com­pa­ny’s safe­ty com­mit­ment to all HSSE, OS­HA and sim­i­lar stan­dards is para­mount and demon­stra­ble. The rel­e­vant reg­u­la­to­ry bod­ies were im­me­di­ate­ly in­formed and all statu­to­ry re­quire­ments com­plied with. In­ves­ti­ga­tions are be­ing con­duct­ed in­to the cir­cum­stances of this un­for­tu­nate in­ci­dent, in­clud­ing a Root Cause Analy­sis from an ex­ter­nal in­de­pen­dent ex­pert. Ini­tial in­spec­tions re­vealed that there was min­i­mal dam­age to the par­tic­u­lar sec­tion of the plant where the main­te­nance pro­ce­dure was be­ing car­ried out,” it added.

Ni­Quan is a Gas-to-Liq­uids (GTL) plant lo­cat­ed on Her­itage’s com­pound at Pointe-a-Pierre.

The com­pa­ny dis­missed a ques­tion over whether sim­i­lar but small­er in­ci­dents had tak­en place at the plant over the past year.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia fol­low­ing the death of Massy En­er­gy En­gi­neered So­lu­tions Ltd (MEES) work­er Al­lan Lane Ramkissoon, Ni­quan said: “There have been no “oth­er small ac­ci­dents.” There has nev­er been and will nev­er be any in­stance of a “cov­er-up.” Ni­Quan has been ful­ly com­pli­ant with its statu­to­ry oblig­a­tions to re­port un­der the Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Act and all ap­plic­a­ble laws and reg­u­la­tions.”

On June 15, Ramkissoon, a pip­efit­ter em­ployed at MEES, suf­fered se­vere burn in­juries while con­duct­ing prepara­to­ry work for planned main­te­nance works on the plant. He was first tak­en to West Shore hos­pi­tal, where he un­der­went surgery to sta­bilise his con­di­tion be­fore be­ing flown to a burn fa­cil­i­ty in Co­lum­bia, USA. He died two days lat­er, on June 18.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that Ni­Quan com­mu­ni­cat­ed with in­vestors over the in­ci­dent yes­ter­day, which the com­pa­ny con­firmed.

“Ni­Quan’s in­vestors and stake­hold­ers ac­cept that this un­for­tu­nate ac­ci­dent oc­curred dur­ing a rou­tine main­te­nance pro­ce­dure be­ing car­ried out by a con­trac­tor and does not af­fect the com­mit­ment of the com­pa­ny to the high­est safe­ty stan­dards. The com­pa­ny’s strate­gic and busi­ness plans re­main un­af­fect­ed,” it said.

The com­pa­ny said that the “morale of the Ni­Quan board, ex­ec­u­tive man­age­ment, per­son­nel, and all re­lat­ed par­ties con­tin­ues to be high and firm, re­sult­ing from a high lev­el of con­fi­dence in the safe­ty of the plant, process, equip­ment, op­er­a­tions and our main­te­nance con­trac­tor, MEES.”

“The com­pa­ny has al­ways had and will con­tin­ue to have in place the high­est in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dard safe­ty regimes, prac­tices and pro­ce­dures. It man­dates these same stan­dards from all its ex­ter­nal con­trac­tors, in­clud­ing Massy En­er­gy En­gi­neered So­lu­tions Lim­it­ed (MEES).”

In a state­ment is­sued yes­ter­day, the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries (MEEI) said they re­ceived a re­port of the in­ci­dent and had set up a team to in­ves­ti­gate “this se­ri­ous fa­tal in­ci­dent.”

“The team is made up of a group of of­fi­cers com­pris­ing a pe­tro­le­um en­gi­neer, a me­chan­i­cal en­gi­neer, a chem­i­cal en­gi­neer and a pe­tro­le­um in­spec­tor and they have been man­dat­ed to in­ves­ti­gate this in­ci­dent to de­ter­mine the root cause and con­trib­u­to­ry cause(s) of this in­ci­dent. The MEEI trusts that all par­ties in­volved will co­op­er­ate with its team so that this un­for­tu­nate in­ci­dent can be prop­er­ly in­ves­ti­gat­ed,” the state­ment said.

Ni­Quan was for­mal­ly opened by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley on March 9, 2021.

The ex­plo­sion fol­lowed one month lat­er.

Fol­low­ing the ex­plo­sion, Ni­quan had said the plant’s hy­dro­c­rack­er sys­tem failed dur­ing an at­tempt­ed start-up.

A pre­lim­i­nary re­port dat­ed April 14, 2021, and an in­ter­im re­port dat­ed June 1, 2021, were pro­duced.

A fi­nal re­port was com­plet­ed fol­low­ing re­ceipt of Ni­Quan’s ques­tions to the min­istry but it was not made pub­lic be­cause of com­mer­cial sen­si­tiv­i­ties.

In April 2022, it was giv­en lim­it­ed ap­proval by the min­istry to rein­tro­duce nat­ur­al gas to its fa­cil­i­ty and in Sep­tem­ber 2022, it was grant­ed full ap­proval to re­sume op­er­a­tions.

Ni­Quan, a pri­vate com­pa­ny, did not dis­close the rec­om­men­da­tions giv­en to it by the min­istry as it moves for­ward with test­ing its abil­i­ty to man­u­fac­ture its prod­ucts.

Last Oc­to­ber, Ni­Quan said in a news­pa­per ad­ver­tise­ment, that it had achieved “com­mer­cial readi­ness sta­tus” with “on-spec­i­fi­ca­tion prod­uct and de­liv­ery of its prod­ucts to its stor­age tanks.”

“This his­toric mile­stone po­si­tions Ni­Quan’s as hav­ing the first com­mer­cial small-scale GTL plant of its kind in the world and the first op­er­a­tional plant of its kind in the West­ern Hemi­sphere,” the ad­ver­tise­ment had said.

It quot­ed the com­pa­ny’s chief ex­ec­u­tive Ain­se­ly Gill as say­ing: “It’s on­ly im­pos­si­ble un­til its achieved. With this lev­el of com­mer­cial readi­ness, there is now a vi­able, com­mer­cial, and com­pet­i­tive al­ter­na­tive to crude oil de­liv­ered diesel which ad­vances the de­car­bon­i­sa­tion and emis­sion-re­duc­tion tar­gets un­der the COP26 Heads of Agree­ments. This is blue-to green so­lu­tion. Clean blue nat­ur­al gas con­vert­ed to 100 per cent green biodegrad­able GTL diesel.”

When the plant restart­ed, Na­tion­al Work­ers’ Union (NWU) ed­u­ca­tion and re­search of­fi­cer Ger­ry Kan­galee ex­pressed con­cern and called for the min­istry re­port to be made pub­lic.

Yes­ter­day, he re­it­er­at­ed this call and added the one on Ramkissoon’s death to the list of re­ports that ougt to be made pub­lic.

“This is very dis­tress­ing,” he said.

He said the min­istry should have held a town hall to com­mu­ni­cate with res­i­dents of Mar­bel­la and sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ties on why the plant was be­ing re-opened fol­low­ing the blast but no such ac­tion was tak­en.

“They went ahead and opened the plant and this is what hap­pened,” he said.

He not­ed that the work­ers at the plant are not unionised and they are ‘on their own’ with fight­ing to raise aware­ness of what was tak­ing place at the plant. He said de­spite his calls, he doesn’t ex­pect the au­thor­i­ties to re­spond.

“I don’t be­lieve they will, in terms of how they op­er­ate. It’s very sick­en­ing how they op­er­ate,” he said.

More about com­pa­ny

Ni­Quan is about three years late in get­ting off the ground.

It had orig­i­nal­ly ex­pect­ed to start pro­duc­tion in De­cem­ber 2019.

Since the ex­plo­sion, the com­pa­ny has faced sev­er­al set­backs, in­clud­ing hav­ing to de­lay a pro­posed US$175 mil­lion bond which would have re-fi­nanced it for the next decade.

Fol­low­ing the ex­plo­sion, the Caribbean rat­ing agency, Cari­CRIS, low­ered the as­signed Ni­Quan rat­ings by 2-notch­es to CariA- (For­eign and Lo­cal Cur­ren­cy Rat­ings) on the re­gion­al rat­ing scale and ttA- on the Trinidad and To­ba­go (T&T) na­tion­al scale.

In March 2021, dur­ing the Prime Min­is­ter’s ques­tions, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley had said that Ni­quan’s agree­ment would be with Paria and is ex­pect­ed to earn for­eign ex­change for the coun­try. He had said the off­take from the plant would be sold to the in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket by Paria while the low sul­phur diesel will be avail­able to the lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket.

Ni­quan is the vi­sion of its founder Ains­ley Gill, who bought the in­com­plete and aban­doned Gas-to-Liq­uids (GTL) plant from Petrotrin (now Trinidad Pe­tro­le­um Hold­ings Lim­it­ed (TPHL) with four com­pa­nies (a lega­cy Petrotrin, Her­itage, Paria and Guaracara) for $35 mil­lion af­ter it was rel­e­gat­ed to scrap iron.

Ac­cord­ing to doc­u­ments in the com­pa­ny’s reg­istry, Ni­Quan is owned by Ni­Quan En­er­gy, reg­is­tered in Wash­ing­ton DC (10,702,216 or­di­nary shares), M&J Ser­vices Lim­it­ed (10,000 or­di­nary shares), Petrotrin (25,000,000 Class B Pref­er­ence Shares) and The Bea­con In­sur­ance Com­pa­ny (167,000 Class C Pref­er­ence Shares).