En­er­gy Min­is­ter Franklin Khan yes­ter­day said that Ni­Quan En­er­gy can­not re­sume op­er­a­tions un­til his in­ves­tiga­tive team re­turns with a re­port on what trig­gered an ear­ly morn­ing ex­plo­sion yes­ter­day which jolt­ed res­i­dents of Mara­bel­la and near­by ar­eas out of their sleep, leav­ing them ter­ri­fied.

The ex­plo­sion at the plant oc­curred al­most a month af­ter it was opened by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley. It has been laud­ed as the first com­mer­cial GTL plant in the west­ern hemi­sphere.

In a brief tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day Khan said that the team was not ful­ly ap­point­ed yet but it would be head­ed by Se­nior Chem­i­cal En­gi­neer Craig Boodoo.

“We fi­nal­is­ing the team, it would be about three peo­ple,” Khan said.

“They have to do a thor­ough in­ves­ti­ga­tion. That is our statu­to­ry du­ty to so do and the plant would not be able to com­mence op­er­a­tions un­til they get the clear­ance from the Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries, based on the find­ings of the team,” he said.

Just af­ter 6.30 yes­ter­day morn­ing, the hy­dro­c­rack­er at Ni­Quan’s Gas-to-Liq­uids Plant ex­plod­ed and led to a sub­se­quent fire at the plant which is lo­cat­ed at the Pointe-a-Pierre Re­fin­ery com­pound.

Res­i­dents in sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ties were left star­tled by the sound of the ex­plo­sion and quick­ly post­ed pic­tures of smoke em­a­nat­ing from the plant to so­cial me­dia to show what was tak­ing place.

The fire was im­me­di­ate­ly con­tained ac­cord­ing to the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and the po­lice ser­vice is­sued an ad­vi­so­ry to avoid the area.

Min­is­ter Khan said that Ni­Quan was in sus­pen­sion mode un­til his team re­turned with its re­port.

“Well it is in sus­pen­sion mode for oth­er rea­sons, but they won’t be able to restart un­til we do our in­ves­ti­ga­tions to find out what was the cause of this in­ci­dent,” Khan said.

Khan added that all re­me­di­al ac­tion need­ed to take place be­fore the plant could restart.

“Ob­vi­ous­ly it’s a plant, a plant that ex­ports com­modi­ties, a plant that makes mon­ey but you can­not sac­ri­fice safe­ty,” he said.

In re­sponse to ques­tions about its time­line to restart, Ni­Quan En­er­gy said that re­turn­ing to its op­er­a­tions was not its main fo­cus.

“Right now our fo­cus is on look­ing af­ter our peo­ple and on un­der­stand­ing ex­act­ly what caused this and pre­vent­ing a re­peat. Once we’ve done that, we’ll turn our at­ten­tion to the op­er­a­tional im­pli­ca­tions of this in­ci­dent,” Ni­Quan’s VP of Cor­po­rate Af­fairs, Mal­colm Wells said.

Wells said that Ni­Quan En­er­gy suf­fered a “se­ri­ous equip­ment fail­ure dur­ing the start-up of the hy­dro­c­rack­er sys­tem” which led to the ex­plo­sion that shook Pointe-a-Pierre and en­vi­rons ear­ly yes­ter­day morn­ing.

The com­pa­ny’s Vice Pres­i­dent of Cor­po­rate Af­fairs, Mal­colm Wells yes­ter­day told Guardian Me­dia that the sys­tem fail­ure re­sult­ed in “the blow out of the DA-301 sys­tem, part of the prod­uct clean­ing process, and caused a fire”.

The com­pa­ny said that as per the es­tab­lished safe­ty pro­ce­dures, the plant was im­me­di­ate­ly shut down safe­ly and the nat­ur­al gas sup­ply was iso­lat­ed.

“The fire was swift­ly ex­tin­guished by the au­to­mat­ic fire pre­ven­tion sys­tem on the plant sup­port­ed by the op­er­at­ing team us­ing the hy­drant-based sys­tem. The in­ci­dent area was con­tained and made safe by the safe­ty team,” Wells said.

He said there were no ca­su­al­ties and the safe­ty pro­ce­dures worked as planned and the com­pa­ny’s op­er­a­tor train­ing proved ef­fec­tive.

“At no point was there any threat to peo­ple or prop­er­ty in any of the ar­eas sur­round­ing the plant,” he said.

Wells said that the safe­ty team was work­ing close­ly with the project team and with rel­e­vant ex­ter­nal stake­hold­ers “to iden­ti­fy ex­act­ly what went wrong and to en­sure that there is a ro­bust plan in place that ad­dress­es the caus­es and guards against any fur­ther in­ci­dents” “Ni­Quan En­er­gy is al­so co­op­er­at­ing ful­ly with the re­spon­si­ble au­thor­i­ties in this re­gard,” he said.

Wells al­so thanked the emer­gency re­sponse ser­vices for their prompt ac­tion.

“It is a mat­ter of huge re­gret to the com­pa­ny that our ze­ro-in­ci­dent safe­ty record has been lost, and in such a fash­ion, but we are grate­ful that every­one on our site was un­hurt,” he said.

“We can­not turn back the clock, but we can com­mit to do­ing every­thing nec­es­sary to en­sure that we learn from this in­ci­dent and that there is no re­peat of this fail­ure,” Wells said.

Mean­while, the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) al­so is­sued a state­ment say­ing that it too would be con­duct­ing an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to what hap­pened at the GTL plant.

In its me­dia re­lease, the EMA said that Ni­Quan was grant­ed a Cer­tifi­cate of En­vi­ron­men­tal Clear­ance (CEC) for the mod­i­fi­ca­tion of the GTL plant to in­clude a steam gen­er­a­tor and a chiller sys­tem.

“The EMA will con­duct an as­sess­ment of en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pact and fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tions at the site of the in­ci­dent in ac­cor­dance with the con­di­tions as out­lined in the CEC,” it said.

“In­ves­ti­ga­tions are on­go­ing,” the EMA said.