The ex­plo­sion at the Ni­quan gas-to-liq­uids plant in Pointe-a-Pierre was caused by a com­po­nent fail­ure which re­sult­ed in a blowout, the En­er­gy Min­istry said in a state­ment

The Min­istry said it is set­ting up a tech­ni­cal team to in­ves­ti­gate the cause of the ac­ci­dent and is in "con­stant con­tact" of­fi­cials of Ni­quan En­er­gy who are cur­rent­ly at the plant.

In a brief re­sponse to Guardian Me­dia, Ni­quan En­er­gy said there were no ca­su­al­ties fol­low­ing the ex­plo­sion and sub­se­quent fire at the plant.

"The in­ci­dent area has been con­tained and made safe and our safe­ty team is cur­rent­ly in the process of iden­ti­fy­ing the cause," said Mal­colm Wells, Ni­quan's VP of Cor­po­rate Af­fairs.

"I need to hear what the safe­ty team says be­fore I can com­ment fur­ther but that’s the sit­u­a­tion as it cur­rent­ly stands."

For­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine said while there was no of­fi­cia word on what caused the ex­plo­sion, it was clear that there was a fail­ure of a new­ly com­mis­sioned plant.

Ram­nar­ine al­so said that fence line com­mu­ni­ties in the area were threat­ened by the plants prox­im­i­ty.

The plant was com­mis­sioned by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley just last month. At that time Dr Row­ley praised Ni­quan and the pe­riph­er­al teams that got the plant off the ground.

The GTL plant it­self has a con­tentious his­to­ry in T&T as con­struc­tion be­gan in 2007 and over the years it be­came a bil­lion dol­lar white ele­phant for the State. At one point, for­mer Petrotrin chair­man Lind­sey Gilette float­ed the idea of sell­ing the in­fra­struc­ture as scrap iron to re­coup some of the mil­lions in­vest­ed.

At the com­mis­sion­ing of the plant, Row­ley said when Ni­quan ac­quired the plant in 2018 Petrotrin re­ceived an up­front cash pay­ment of US$10 mil­lion with a re­main­ing US$25 mil­lion to be paid in pref­er­ence shares.

He said Gov­ern­ment was set to re­ceieve some $2 bil­lion in tax­es and statu­to­ry pay­ments over the life of the project.