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Tuesday, July 8, 2025

Report into NiQuan explosion blames ‘inadequate supervision’ for deadly accident

by

Andrea Perez-Sobers
20 days ago
20250619
Minister of Energy Dr Roodal Moonilal holds a copy of the NiQuan report in Parliament yesterday.

Minister of Energy Dr Roodal Moonilal holds a copy of the NiQuan report in Parliament yesterday.

ROGER JACOB

A Min­istry of En­er­gy in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the dead­ly June 2023 fire at Ni­Quan Gas to Liq­uids plant, which a High Court judge or­dered be made pub­lic, found “in­ad­e­quate lead­er­ship and su­per­vi­sion” led to the in­ci­dent.

The fire re­sult­ed in the death of Massy En­er­gy En­gi­neered So­lu­tions Ltd pipe fit­ter Al­lan­lane Ramkissoon.

The re­port de­tailed mul­ti­ple fail­ings that con­tributed to the ac­ci­dent, in­clud­ing in­ad­e­quate train­ing, in­com­plete pro­ce­dures, and crit­i­cal safe­ty checks that were over­looked. Ramkissoon, 35, was re­mov­ing a ni­tro­gen hose while await­ing a steam hose when a fire erupt­ed near the con­denser at­tached to the fa­cil­i­ty’s frac­tion­a­tion col­umn.

There were no in­struc­tions to close the valve be­fore the hose was de­tached and ab­nor­mal wax tank con­di­tions may have caused hy­dro­car­bon vapours to back­flow and ig­nite, the re­port said.

On June 6, Jus­tice Ava­son Quin­lan-Williams quashed the Min­istry of En­er­gy’s de­ci­sion to with­hold the in­ves­tiga­tive re­port in­to the mat­ter.

Jus­tice Quin­lan-Williams ruled that the min­istry had not pre­sent­ed suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence to jus­ti­fy its de­ci­sion. She found that there was sig­nif­i­cant pub­lic in­ter­est war­rant­i­ng dis­clo­sure.

The re­port was laid in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day by En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, who said it was in­tend­ed to bring trans­paren­cy to the mat­ter and pro­vide Ramkissoon’s fam­i­ly with a full ac­count of what oc­curred.

He slammed the for­mer gov­ern­ment for how Ramkissoon’s wid­ow was treat­ed dur­ing the or­deal.

“When the min­istry un­der Port-of-Spain North St Ann’s/West (MP) was busy pay­ing the lawyers to fight a case not to dis­close this re­port in my hand, they nev­er gave a ham­per, a dol­lar, one io­ta of as­sis­tance to the fam­i­ly of de­ceased Al­lan­lane Ramkissoon. So, the lawyers went with over $50,000, $60,000 and Mrs Ramkissoon nev­er got one ham­per, one. And she, of course, had to pay her coun­sel to take up the mat­ter,” Mooni­lal lament­ed.

He said the le­gal mat­ter arose be­cause the wid­ow sought ju­di­cial re­view of the de­ci­sion by the min­istry not to dis­close.

“Be­fore April 28, it was in­deed the for­mer prime min­is­ter and min­is­ter. The Min­istry of En­er­gy paid for this one court mat­ter, over $60,000, to de­ny the wid­ow of Al­lan­lane Ramkissoon the right to ac­cess the re­port on the ac­ci­dent of her hus­band for the in­for­ma­tion,” the min­is­ter ex­plained.

The re­port al­so stat­ed that the drill records process at Ni­Quan En­er­gy Trinidad Ltd, which is in re­ceiver­ship, was un­sat­is­fac­to­ry. It said a to­tal of five drills were con­duct­ed from 2020 to 2023.

The re­port fur­ther stat­ed that pri­or to the in­ci­dent, the plant was not meet­ing ex­pect­ed pro­duc­tion rates and prod­uct qual­i­ty, and there was in­sta­bil­i­ty of the frac­tion­at­ing col­umn.

“Two Sub­ject Mat­ter Ex­perts were re­port­ed­ly brought in to as­sist with this chal­lenge but were un­able to view the plant work­ing at full ca­pac­i­ty due to the gas cur­tail­ment. It is un­clear whether they par­tic­i­pat­ed in the draft­ing of the man­age­ment of change doc­u­ments or were in­clud­ed in the plans for the plant mod­i­fi­ca­tion, as all doc­u­ments used were gen­er­at­ed by NETL,” the re­port stat­ed.

It al­so re­vealed three of the op­er­a­tors on du­ty at the time were trainees. The doc­u­men­ta­tion had list­ed the task as high-risk and re­quir­ing a har­ness, but there was no record of Ramkissoon be­ing out­fit­ted with one. The fire alarm was not trig­gered, the emer­gency con­tact num­ber was not in ser­vice, and night-shift work­ers had nev­er been in­clud­ed in drills. It took near­ly an hour for an am­bu­lance to ar­rive.

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, Anand Ram­lo­gan SC, who rep­re­sent­ed Ramkissoon’s wid­ow, said he was pleased that Mooni­lal has seen fit to dis­close the in­ves­tiga­tive re­port.

“For­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Stu­art Young should hang his head in shame for break­ing his promise to this poor fam­i­ly. He promised to dis­close this re­port and then backpedalled on it when the pub­lic out­rage died down be­cause he prob­a­bly thought she could not af­ford to sue him to get it,” Ram­lo­gan said.


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