(Trinidad Express) Some of the country’s biggest industrial plants were forced to shut down operations on Wednesday after being alerted that their power supply had to be unplugged as a result of the rupture of the Cross Island Pipeline.
The leak knocked out the natural gas supply to the Trinidad Generation Unlimited (TGU) power plant in La Brea, which supplies some of the power to the national electricity grid.
Last night, the only plants still operating were working at a reduced capacity, using back up generators.
The excess gas that was pumped to the plants before the power cut, was being burned off across the estate.
The cut has affected operations at PCS Nitrogen, ArcelorMittal, Caribbean Nitrogen, Methanex, Methanol Holdings Nu-Iron, Point Lisas Nitrogen Limited, Yara Trinidad, and Industrial Gases Limited, among others.
Company executives were initially told that the repair of the line will take at least four days, with a crew being mobilised late yesterday to begin the task of digging down to the buried 56-inch pipeline that snakes from Guayaguayare to Point Fortin, where the company Atlantic has its liquified natural gas processing facility.
However, the Express was told late yesterday that the fix could take as long as two weeks.
The financial loss will run into the millions, the Express was told, with the ammonia and methanol producing companies losing potential revenue, the National Gas Company losing out on sales, and the State losing the chance to collect on corporation tax.
The TGU supplies power to T&TEC’s electricity grid, along with Trinity Power and Power Generation Company of Trinidad and Tobago (PowerGen). The three independent power producers receive natural gas which is converted to electricity and sent to T&TEC for distribution on the utility’s electricity grid.
T&TEC: Less power available
T&TEC communications manager, Annabelle Brasnell, said TGU was unable to produce power which means that there was now less power on the grid.
“We are managing with the existing capacity that we have so that we can try to keep customers on but industrial customers in the Point Lisas Estate has curtailed their activities and we are asking domestic customers to conserve as well,” she said.
Brasnell said TGU produces a significant amount of T&TEC’s bulk power, which is now unavailable.
“We are still getting power from Trinity and PowerGen and because we are not getting the TGU power, it means that the capacity that we normally have to serve the customers is much less than it should be.
In order to keep customers online we are trying to reduce demand,” she said.
T&TEC has advised customers to cut back on equipment and appliances, especially during late evening — the peak time for consumption.
“Under normal circumstances we have sufficient power to be able to keep everybody on. If we do not have the amount of power that we usually do, we will now ask customers to cut back on the equipment and appliances that they normally use which will allow us to keep everybody on stream,” she said.
Brasnell said the company has managed to avoid load shedding thus far. “We are trying to avoid load shedding and we have managed to do that thus far. We have the industrial customers in the estate come down and things will remain as they were overnight which were pretty good. Last night we didn’t load shed and we are hoping to continue that way,” she said.
