Moonilal: 92 acts of sabotage in oil sector since October

RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­[email protected]

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal says Trinidad and To­ba­go’s oil in­fra­struc­ture has been tar­get­ed by 92 acts of sab­o­tage be­tween Oc­to­ber 2025 and June 2026, cost­ing the State-owned Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny more than $1 mil­lion in dam­aged equip­ment and mil­lions more spent on en­vi­ron­men­tal clean-up and lost oil pro­duc­tion.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia at the Debe Hin­du SDMS Pri­ma­ry School yes­ter­day, Dr Mooni­lal said in­ves­ti­ga­tors had re­ceived cred­i­ble in­tel­li­gence sug­gest­ing some of those re­spon­si­ble for the sab­o­tage may have links to con­trac­tors work­ing in the en­er­gy sec­tor.

“What we have dis­cov­ered is that there is cred­i­ble in­tel­li­gence that acts of sab­o­tage have been tak­ing place in­volv­ing what we sus­pect to be per­sons with some af­fil­i­a­tion to con­trac­tors,” Dr Mooni­lal said.

The min­is­ter de­scribed the lev­el of van­dal­ism as alarm­ing.

“Be­tween Oc­to­ber last year and June this year we have had 92 acts of sab­o­tage. It has cost us over $1 mil­lion in equip­ment alone. The clean-up ac­tiv­i­ties have cost mil­lions of dol­lars, and that ex­cludes, of course, the loss of oil pro­duc­tion,” he re­vealed.

His com­ments come less than a week af­ter Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um con­firmed that a hy­dro­car­bon leak along GP Road, Bar­rack­pore, on June 30 was be­lieved to have been de­lib­er­ate­ly caused.

Pre­lim­i­nary in­ves­ti­ga­tions found that ap­prox­i­mate­ly six feet of pipeline had been in­ten­tion­al­ly de­tached, re­sult­ing in an oil spill.

Her­itage ac­ti­vat­ed its In­ci­dent Com­mand Sys­tem im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter the dis­cov­ery, de­ploy­ing heavy equip­ment and vac­u­um trucks to re­cov­er spilt oil while plac­ing con­tain­ment booms in a near­by wa­ter­course to pre­vent fur­ther con­t­a­m­i­na­tion. Air qual­i­ty mon­i­tor­ing was al­so con­duct­ed as a pre­cau­tion for near­by res­i­dents.

Dr Mooni­lal said the in­ci­dent was not viewed as an iso­lat­ed act but as part of a broad­er pat­tern tar­get­ing crit­i­cal na­tion­al in­fra­struc­ture.

He not­ed that sim­i­lar at­tacks had af­fect­ed elec­tric­i­ty and telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions in­fra­struc­ture through the theft of cop­per ca­bles and oth­er ma­te­ri­als.

In re­sponse, Dr Mooni­lal said Her­itage has been in­struct­ed to sig­nif­i­cant­ly strength­en se­cu­ri­ty across its op­er­a­tions.

He said in­ves­ti­ga­tors be­lieved some per­pe­tra­tors may have had le­git­i­mate ac­cess to en­er­gy fa­cil­i­ties.

“I’m told that a Her­itage ve­hi­cle was seen in the area. We don’t know if it was car­ry­ing Her­itage work­ers or con­trac­tor work­ers, but we be­lieve the per­sons who did this had some af­fil­i­a­tion with the com­pa­ny it­self.”

He stressed that in­ves­ti­ga­tions were con­tin­u­ing along­side the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice.

“We are work­ing with the po­lice and, once the in­for­ma­tion can be trans­lat­ed in­to cred­i­ble ev­i­dence that they can pros­e­cute, I’m sure the po­lice would make ar­rests in due course,” he said.

The min­is­ter al­so sought to re­as­sure res­i­dents liv­ing near oil­fields and pipelines that pub­lic safe­ty re­mained a pri­or­i­ty.

He said Her­itage’s health and safe­ty teams were mon­i­tor­ing af­fect­ed ar­eas around the clock, while se­cu­ri­ty pa­trols had been in­ten­si­fied.