Operator dies after crane collapse offshore

Rad­hi­ca De Sil­va & 

Ke­jan Haynes 

An op­er­a­tor is said to have died af­ter a crane col­lapsed on a ves­sel he was work­ing on at Peren­co’s off­shore Samaan field on Wednes­day af­ter­noon, with the work­er’s body lat­er brought ashore at the Port of Ga­le­o­ta.

The work­er had not been iden­ti­fied up to Wednes­day night.

The in­ci­dent oc­curred around 3 pm, when the crane struc­ture col­lapsed on­to the off­shore plat­form and parts of a sup­ply ves­sel near­by, ac­cord­ing to in­for­ma­tion re­ceived by Guardian Me­dia.

The op­er­a­tor was in­side the crane cab when the struc­ture fell more than 100 feet in­to the wa­ter. The cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the col­lapse and the events lead­ing to the work­er’s death have not been es­tab­lished.

A source fa­mil­iar with the in­ci­dent re­called what oc­cured.

“I hoped he sur­vived, but a fall from that height and with a part of the crane land­ing on the barge — the force of the im­pact would have re­sult­ed in se­ri­ous in­jury, if not death,” the source said.

An­oth­er source said a he­li­copter had been on stand­by to evac­u­ate the work­er, but ques­tions arose about whether a night-time evac­u­a­tion could be car­ried out.

How­ev­er, Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands the work­er’s body was sub­se­quent­ly tak­en ashore by boat to the Port of Ga­le­o­ta.

Op­er­a­tions at the Samaan field were said to have been sus­pend­ed fol­low­ing the in­ci­dent.

Wayne Mo­han, a process safe­ty and op­er­a­tions pro­fes­sion­al with more than 30 years of ex­pe­ri­ence in the petro­chem­i­cal and pe­tro­le­um in­dus­tries, said the pend­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the in­ci­dent should ex­am­ine both the cause of the col­lapse and the ef­fec­tive­ness of the emer­gency re­sponse.

“Two dis­tinct as­pects of this in­ci­dent that would de­serve at­ten­tion would be: one, pre­ven­tion — what caused this in­ci­dent; and two, mit­i­ga­tion and emer­gency re­sponse — how quick­ly was he re­cov­ered and were the res­cue arrange­ments ef­fec­tive,” Mo­han said.

Peren­co op­er­ates the Samaan field as part of the Teak, Samaan and Poui block, an off­shore oil-pro­duc­ing area in Trinidad.

The in­ci­dent comes amid con­tin­ued scruti­ny of safe­ty in the off­shore en­er­gy sec­tor fol­low­ing pre­vi­ous fa­tal­i­ties in­volv­ing work­ers in high-risk op­er­a­tions.

In Feb­ru­ary 2022, divers Kaz­im Ali Jr, Yusuf Hen­ry, Rishi Na­gas­sar and Fyzal Kur­ban died af­ter be­ing sucked in­to a pipeline while car­ry­ing out main­te­nance work at Berth Six of Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny Ltd’s fa­cil­i­ty at Pointe-a-Pierre. A fifth div­er, Christo­pher Boodram, sur­vived. The tragedy prompt­ed a Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the deaths and the res­cue re­sponse.

In De­cem­ber 2024, off­shore work­er Pe­te Phillip went miss­ing af­ter a rig par­tial­ly col­lapsed in the East Sol­da­do Field in the Gulf of Paria. Phillip fell in­to the sea dur­ing the in­ci­dent in­volv­ing Well Ser­vices Lim­it­ed’s Rig 110. De­spite search and re­cov­ery ef­forts, he was not found.

In Jan­u­ary, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal an­nounced that the Gov­ern­ment had can­celled the Safe To Work (STOW) cer­ti­fi­ca­tion re­quire­ment for ac­cess to the en­er­gy sec­tor, say­ing the sys­tem im­posed un­fair costs and bar­ri­ers on busi­ness­es.

The STOW frame­work had served as a pre-qual­i­fi­ca­tion sys­tem re­quir­ing ser­vice providers to meet min­i­mum health, safe­ty and en­vi­ron­men­tal stan­dards be­fore bid­ding for en­er­gy con­tracts. The Gov­ern­ment said it would re­vert to ISO stan­dards and oth­er codes that ap­plied be­fore the frame­work was in­tro­duced.

The cause of Wednes­day’s crane col­lapse and whether any safe­ty or reg­u­la­to­ry fail­ures con­tributed to the death re­main un­known.

Guardian Me­dia is await­ing a com­ment from Peren­co and the Min­is­ter of En­er­gy.