Heritage Petroleum claims sabotage in oil leak

(Trinidad Guardian) Pre­dic­tions of sab­o­tage of T&T’s oil as­sets are ma­te­ri­al­is­ing af­ter Heritage Pe­tro­le­um re­port­ed that a crude oil line had been hack­sawed on Fri­day by al­leged saboteurs.

In a state­ment, Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed said it was now work­ing with the po­lice to find the par­ties re­spon­si­ble for an act of sab­o­tage on one of its pipelines at CR64 Pro­duc­tion Head­er in Cruze Field, Point Fortin.

The cut line was dis­cov­ered at 3pm on Friday and came a day af­ter a sub-sea leak de­vel­oped at Sol­da­do North fields in the Gulf of Paria. While the sub-sea oil leak has not been iden­ti­fied as sab­o­tage, Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um said the dam­age to the pipeline at Cruze Field, Point Fortin seemed to be an act of sab­o­tage.

The three-inch bulk pipeline was vis­i­bly hack­sawed in sev­er­al places and stolen, re­sult­ing in the spillage of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 50 bar­rels of oil. Booms were de­ployed to con­tain the spilled oil. “Recov­ery and clean-up ef­forts are on­go­ing,” Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um said.

All reg­u­la­to­ry agen­cies, in­clud­ing the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy Af­fairs; the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA); and the Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Agency (OS­HA) have been no­ti­fied.

“Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um…is com­mit­ted to en­sure that all our as­sets and peo­ple were op­er­at­ing safe­ly and with­in the law,” the company said.

Last month, ter­mi­nat­ed Petrotrin work­ers said they were con­cerned that off­shore as­sets of Trinmar could be vul­ner­a­ble to sabo­teurs since the clo­sure of Petrotrin on De­cem­ber 1.

A source said while Amal­ga­mat­ed Se­cu­ri­ty has been hired to pro­tect oil as­sets on land, there was no pro­tec­tion on the high seas.

“Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um can­not re­ly on the Coast Guard to pro­tect its as­sets. Prop­er se­cu­ri­ty arrangements must be put in place,” the source said.

How­ev­er, the T&T Guardian con­tact­ed a com­pa­ny spokesper­son from Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um to inquire what se­cu­ri­ty arrange­ments were in place on land and on sea to pro­tect oil as­sets.

The com­pa­ny spokesman de­nied that there were no se­cu­ri­ty arrange­ments in place say­ing: “Secu­ri­ty has been height­ened and beefed up since the start of op­er­a­tions on De­cem­ber 1.”

Ef­forts to con­tact pres­i­dent gen­er­al of the Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union An­cel Ro­get were unsuc­cess­ful as calls to his cel­lu­lar phone went unan­swered.