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Monday, July 28, 2025

UNC: NiQuan has questions to answer

by

Gail Alexander
1572 days ago
20210408
Workers walk along the Southern Main Road, Marabella, after their workplace in Tropical Plaza was evacuated following the explosion at the Ni Quan plant, in Petrotrin, Point-a-Pierre, yesterday.

Workers walk along the Southern Main Road, Marabella, after their workplace in Tropical Plaza was evacuated following the explosion at the Ni Quan plant, in Petrotrin, Point-a-Pierre, yesterday.

RISHI RAGOONATH

The Op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress is de­mand­ing a full probe in­to yes­ter­day’s ex­plo­sion at the Ni­Quan En­er­gy (Gas-to-Liq­uids) plant.

“Min­is­ters of En­er­gy and Labour Franklin Khan and Stephen Mc­Clashie must launch an im­me­di­ate in­ves­ti­ga­tion through the Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Au­thor­i­ty (OS­HA) and must en­sure there’s a full sus­pen­sion of all ac­tiv­i­ties,” said Op­po­si­tion MP Rudy In­dars­ingh fol­low­ing the ear­ly morn­ing ex­plo­sion.

Plant sources said it is be­lieved the ex­plo­sion in­volved a strip­per col­umn with­in the hy­dro­c­rack­ing “skid” unit of Ni­Quan’s plant on the for­mer Petrotrin re­fin­ery’s Pointe- a-Pierre com­pound. The pur­pose of the Hy­dro­c­rack­er Unit is to con­vert wax pro­duced in the fa­cil­i­ty to a high-qual­i­ty diesel prod­uct.

Work­ers, who pre­ferred not to be named, said night shift crews were leav­ing when the ex­plo­sion oc­curred.

They said spe­cial op­er­a­tors were sub­se­quent­ly sent in to shut down the plant to deal with wax in the pipeline that may have con­tributed to the blast. The sit­u­a­tion caused mas­sive traf­fic jams be­tween Mara­bel­la and Point-a- Pierre.

In­dars­ingh added, “This plant was the in­fa­mous World GTL plant built un­der the late Mal­colm Jones. The pub­lic is owed in­for­ma­tion on who are the pri­ma­ry movers and shak­ers be­hind this plant. Min­is­ter Khan through his Min­istry as reg­u­la­tor of this en­er­gy as­set must re­veal whether there was rigid col­lab­o­ra­tion and sign off with Labour through OS­HA be­fore its for­mal open­ing.”

“I shud­der to think what would have hap­pened if the re­fin­ery was op­er­at­ing. Did the reg­u­la­to­ry and over­sight au­thor­i­ties and agen­cies turn a blind eye to the OS­HA risks - which be­came ob­vi­ous a few days ago when er­rat­ic flares em­anat­ed from the fa­cil­i­ty- be­cause per­sons be­hind this plant are high­ly con­nect­ed po­lit­i­cal­ly to peo­ple in Gov­ern­ment?” In­dars­ingh said.

Mean­while, Pointe-a-Pierre MP David Lee added, “I’m ex­treme­ly grate­ful none of my con­stituents in the sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ties of Mara­bel­la and en­vi­rons ex­pe­ri­enced in­juries or prop­er­ty dam­age. When Petrotrin was in op­er­a­tion, peo­ple were guar­an­teed as­sis­tance with health­care in the event of a cri­sis. To­day we’re un­sure of any as­sis­tance from Ni­Quan in the event of an emer­gency.”

Lee added, “There’s al­so need for In­de­pen­dent Safe­ty Spe­cial­ists to as­cer­tain the safe­ty of Ni­Quan’s op­er­a­tions in re­la­tion to oth­er plants on the Petrotrin com­pound as well as risks posed to the com­mu­ni­ty. Even though the re­fin­ery’s been moth­balled, Ni­Quan must im­me­di­ate­ly un­der­take and present the find­ings of a trans­par­ent re­view of the safe­ty of its op­er­a­tions on the Petrotrin com­pound.

“For weeks we’ve heard about sig­nif­i­cant is­sues at the plant with me­dia re­ports con­firm­ing it faced se­ri­ous pro­duc­tion is­sues. Ni­Quan is a clear ex­am­ple of Gov­ern­ment’s Big Talk /No re­sults pol­i­cy. On­ly on March 9 the Prime Min­is­ter her­ald­ed that it was ‘ a tri­umph, a re­sound­ing suc­cess.”

The MP added,” An­swers are need­ed on why Gov­ern­ment is so in­vest­ed in Ni­Quan. It’s damn­ing Gov­ern­ment has giv­en Ni­Quan this plant at a pep­per­corn rate de­spite mil­lions be­ing spent to build it, Gov­ern­ment has agreed to buy all their off­take and al­so of­fered them guar­an­teed sup­ply of gas. But Pro­man is be­ing forced to shut down plants due to short­age of gas.”

“Boom” shook res­i­dents

The ex­plo­sion’s “boom” shook, star­tled and scared res­i­dents down­wind, as far north as Cal­i­for­nia and be­yond San Fer­nan­do.

A Palmiste res­i­dent who was in the bath­room at 6.30 am told Guardian Me­dia, “I thought it was a trans­former ex­plod­ing!”

A Rush­worth Street res­i­dent said the same.

Of­fi­cials of Trop­i­cal Plaza - op­po­site the re­fin­ery -said the Plaza didn’t suf­fer bro­ken glass or sim­i­lar dam­age, on­ly ash blow­ing from the ex­plo­sion af­fect­ed one area. Of­fi­cials were evac­u­at­ed but were sub­se­quent­ly al­lowed to re­turn and do in­spec­tions.

“Pope” Amin of Amin’s Roti shop in Mara­bel­la told Guardian Me­dia, “It was a big, big noise which shook our build­ing like the large earth­quakes we’ve had in Trinidad and To­ba­go. We were the on­ly busi­ness place open when the ex­plo­sion hap­pened, luck­i­ly oth­ers were closed.”

Kelvin Har­nanan (one­time vice pres­i­dent of Petrotrin’s re­fin­ery) who lives near­by added, “It sound­ed like a very heavy steel door slam­ming shut.”

A Plai­sance Park res­i­dent said the chan­de­lier fell and broke.

Bat­too Av­enue, Mar­bel­la res­i­dents said glass­es broke.

“My body jerked with the im­pact,” added an­oth­er Mara­bel­la res­i­dent.

Call for res­i­dents to be com­pen­sat­ed

The Con­fed­er­a­tion of Re­gion­al Busi­ness Cham­bers said, “It’s deeply trou­bling to wit­ness this most dis­as­trous oc­cur­rence in such a short time since the Ni­Quan plant’s com­mis­sion­ing. If dam­age is in­flict­ed on res­i­dents’ prop­er­ties, the onus is on NETL to com­pen­sate them. “We call for a full in­ves­ti­ga­tion by qual­i­fied pro­fes­sion­als in­to this. The plant should tem­porar­i­ly halt op­er­a­tions un­til the in­ves­ti­ga­tion is com­plet­ed and a fi­nal re­port is sub­mit­ted.”


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