Heritage replaces 10,000 feet of ageing pipeline infrastructure

Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed has be­gun tran­si­tion­ing to up­grad­ed pipeline in­fra­struc­ture as part of an on­go­ing pro­gramme aimed at im­prov­ing op­er­a­tional safe­ty, en­vi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion and sys­tem re­li­a­bil­i­ty.

In a me­dia state­ment, the state-owned en­er­gy com­pa­ny said the ini­tia­tive in­volved the re­place­ment of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 10,000 feet of pipeline in­fra­struc­ture run­ning through the com­mu­ni­ties of Mara­bel­la and Tarou­ba.

Her­itage said the project forms part of its con­tin­ued in­vest­ment in re­plac­ing age­ing in­fra­struc­ture to re­duce op­er­a­tional down­time, im­prove pipeline in­tegri­ty and min­imise risks to near­by com­mu­ni­ties and the en­vi­ron­ment.

Act­ing Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer Ker­ry Ram­per­sad said the up­grades rep­re­sent a ma­jor step in strength­en­ing the com­pa­ny’s op­er­a­tions and long-term sus­tain­abil­i­ty.

“The mod­erni­sa­tion of our pipeline in­fra­struc­ture re­flects Her­itage’s com­mit­ment to safer, more re­li­able and en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly re­spon­si­ble op­er­a­tions. These up­grades are crit­i­cal to strength­en­ing op­er­a­tional re­silience while sup­port­ing the long-term sus­tain­abil­i­ty of our op­er­a­tions,” Ram­per­sad stat­ed.

The com­pa­ny not­ed that age­ing pipelines can pose op­er­a­tional and en­vi­ron­men­tal risks if not prop­er­ly main­tained and up­grad­ed. It said the re­place­ment pro­gramme is in­tend­ed to en­sure safer trans­porta­tion sys­tems while im­prov­ing ef­fi­cien­cy across its op­er­a­tions.

Her­itage al­so reaf­firmed its com­mit­ment to main­tain­ing ac­tive en­gage­ment with res­i­dents in neigh­bour­ing com­mu­ni­ties through­out the tran­si­tion process.

Ac­cord­ing to the re­lease, the com­pa­ny plans to con­tin­ue work­ing close­ly with reg­u­la­to­ry agen­cies, stake­hold­ers and af­fect­ed com­mu­ni­ties to en­sure the project is car­ried out safe­ly and re­spon­si­bly.

The com­pa­ny added that on­go­ing en­vi­ron­men­tal mon­i­tor­ing will re­main a key part of the ini­tia­tive as work pro­gress­es.

The up­grad­ed in­fra­struc­ture is ex­pect­ed to en­hance op­er­a­tional re­silience while re­duc­ing the like­li­hood of dis­rup­tions linked to age­ing pipelines.

The re­lease did not spec­i­fy the pro­ject­ed com­ple­tion date for the works or the to­tal cost of the re­place­ment project.

Her­itage, one of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s ma­jor en­er­gy pro­duc­ers, op­er­ates an ex­ten­sive net­work of oil and gas in­fra­struc­ture across the coun­try. The lat­est pipeline re­place­ment ini­tia­tive comes amid con­tin­ued ef­forts with­in the en­er­gy sec­tor to mod­ernise crit­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture and im­prove en­vi­ron­men­tal safe­guards.