(Trinidad Guardian) Energy Minister Kevin Ramnarine this week signed a TT$15.6 million contract with Norwegian company Det Norse Veritas (DNV) to undertake a comprehensive audit of all of the assets in the energy sector in T&T.
This means that all of the energy sector companies, including bpTT, Repsol, BG, Atlantic, Petrotrin and other major companies which operate in T&T will have their company documents reviewed as well as their facilities inspected by the DNV team.
Ramnarine said the companies have all bought into the exercise which began yesterday and is expected to last for some nine months.
Signatories to the contract included Ramnarine, Bjorn Nilberg, deputy head of department Risk Advisory Services Det Norse Veritas and Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Energy Selwyn Lashley.
Addressing the audience which included presidents and chairmen of energy companies at the Petrotrin Staff Club, Pointe a Pierre, Ramnarine said the exercise had its genesis in a commitment he gave to the Parliament in 2014 following the oil spill in La Brea.
With poor infrastructure and lack of maintenance being blamed for the many spills in the Gulf of Paria, Ramnarine had promised then to undertake a national facilities audit of all the energy assets in T&T in a bid to minimise such future risks.
He said Cabinet mandated the audit which has never been done in this country before. Ramnarine said he could not find in his research, evidence of it having been done in any other country.
He said he thought it important to have a comprehensive examination of all the assets that underpin the country’s energy sector when one considered its age.
“As Bjorn pointed out, when this sort of work was done before, it was done on one asset or one ship or on one off-shore platform.
“This is an opportunity to examine the entire national value chain from downstream to midstream to refining.”
He said the DNV, established in 1865, which merged with GL (established in 1867) in 2013, is no stranger to the energy sector and was selected after a rigorous procurement exercise by the Central Tenders Board.
