GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Se­nior Re­porter

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

The Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries Dr Roodal Mooni­lal has or­dered an im­me­di­ate re­view of Liq­ue­fied Pe­tro­le­um Gas (cook­ing gas) safe­ty pro­to­cols fol­low­ing a se­ries of ex­plo­sions and fires linked to res­i­den­tial LPG cylin­ders.

The di­rec­tive man­dates the T&T Na­tion­al Pe­tro­le­um Mar­ket­ing Com­pa­ny Ltd (NP) to as­sess the op­er­a­tions of its sub­sidiary, NAT­PET In­vest­ments Com­pa­ny Ltd, which over­sees the fill­ing, test­ing and re­fur­bish­ment of LPG cylin­ders.

The re­view aims to en­sure that all cylin­ders dis­trib­uted are ver­i­fied to be free from leaks and struc­tur­al de­fects.

Mooni­lal made the an­nounce­ment while de­liv­er­ing the fea­ture ad­dress at Am­cham T&T’s 2025 Health Safe­ty Se­cu­ri­ty and En­vi­ron­ment (HSSE) con­fer­ence which took place at the Hy­att Re­gency Tues­day.

“As a mat­ter of ur­gency, I have in­struct­ed the min­istry to col­lab­o­rate with the Trinidad and To­ba­go Na­tion­al Pe­tro­le­um Mar­ket­ing Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (NP) and oth­er reg­u­la­to­ry agen­cies to con­tin­ue to in­ves­ti­gate the se­ries of ex­plo­sions and fires linked to LPG cylin­ders. It is in­tend­ed that the find­ings of these in­ves­ti­ga­tions will bet­ter in­form safe­ty prac­tices in the use of LPG. In the in­ter­im, NP has been di­rect­ed to re­view the process­es and pro­ce­dures of its sub­sidiary com­pa­ny, NAT­PET In­vest­ments Com­pa­ny Ltd (NAT­PET), which op­er­ates a fill­ing, test­ing and re­fur­bish­ment plant for LPG to en­sure that all LPG cylin­ders sup­plied are ver­i­fied as be­ing free from leaks or any oth­er de­fects,” Mooni­lal ex­plained.

He said the same du­ty of care would be ap­plied to oth­er dis­trib­u­tors of cook­ing gas, adding that fur­ther­more, a team com­pris­ing le­gal and tech­ni­cal of­fi­cers from the MEEI are in the process of re­view­ing draft LPG reg­u­la­tions and li­cences with the in­ten­tion of fi­nal­i­sa­tion and im­ple­men­ta­tion.

This ac­tion comes amid grow­ing con­cern over the fre­quen­cy of cook­ing gas-re­lat­ed in­ci­dents, par­tic­u­lar­ly in do­mes­tic set­tings.

Mooni­lal al­so not­ed that the pro­lif­er­a­tion of LPG in­ci­dents could al­so be at­test­ed to the lack of na­tion­al stan­dards for cook­ing gas.

“There has been work in this area with draft stan­dards hav­ing been pre­pared by a Spec­i­fi­ca­tion Com­mit­tee con­sti­tut­ed by the T&T Bu­reau of Stan­dards, com­pris­ing the MEEI and oth­er reg­u­la­to­ry agen­cies and stake­hold­ers. These draft na­tion­al stan­dards for LPG are for both in­dus­tri­al and res­i­den­tial use.

“I would have per­son­al­ly di­rect­ed that the min­istry for­mal­ly re­quest the re­con­ven­ing of the Spec­i­fi­ca­tions Com­mit­tee, as a re­sult the com­mit­tee is cur­rent­ly work­ing to­wards the com­ple­tion of the LPG stan­dards which will be made avail­able for pub­lic com­ment and ul­ti­mate­ly be con­sid­ered for ap­proval as Na­tion­al LPG Stan­dards,” Mooni­lal added.

The min­is­ter added that the pro­lif­er­a­tion of in­ci­dents rais­es the ques­tion as to why tech­nol­o­gy is not be­ing used to min­imise or elim­i­nate ac­ci­dents but he said gov­ern­ment would pur­sue leg­isla­tive, tech­ni­cal and en­force­ment mea­sures ad­dress the is­sue.