Problems at Perenco, Trinidad

Perenco is a French oil and gas producer operating in 16 countries with over 6000 employees and approx. 450,000 boe production globally.

Perenco took over Repsol's 70% stake in the TSP asset offshore Trinidad in 2016. State owned NGC and Heritage Petroleum (formerly Petrotrin) owns 15% each. Current production is around 12,000 boe per day.

The company has a reputation as a mature field operator, managing to extract profits where traditional operators would not. To accomplish this, Perenco has to keep their operating costs quite low. Keep in mind the assets here are quite old and maintenance is very expensive.

On Jan 28, 2020, a fire broke out on the Teak Alpha platform and 3 workers were injured. 2 were taken to a private hospital in Trinidad due to the severity of their injuries. The fire had to be put out by a vessel in the area that sprayed down the platform.

Perenco has released a meagre and unsatisfactory update to the media more than 24 hours after this took place, likely only due to videos of the burning platform that went viral.

Around Christmas Eve, a fire on a platform also broke out, and thankfully no injuries were reported. Again, there was almost no news coverage except for viral videos.

In October 2019, a 32-year-old employee died while offshore, and again only became public when a story was shared hundreds of times on Facebook. The conditions leading to his death were deemed non-work related by the company.

And just days before, a post from an employee also went viral, complaining about the mistreatment of offshore workers by the operator.

It is totally unacceptable that neither Perenco nor the Ministry of Energy has communicated info of any real substance about these successive incidents. Even worse, the two partners (NGC and Heritage) are state companies who will have full access to all operational information.

Had these events occurred on a rig or platform operated by BP, Shell, BHP or even Petrotrin/Heritage, the media coverage would have been extraordinary. It would have been front page news at a minimum. The companies would have activated their Communications teams to manage the situation and it is very likely we would have comments from the Minister of Energy or even the Prime Minister.

Had this occurred on an Exxon rig or vessel in Guyana (who started producing oil only in December), within hours, there would have been dozens of online stories, press conferences by the operator and the regulators and tons of calls by the population for the heads of those in charge.

In Trinidad for some reason, we treat these incidents as trivial and routine. Possibly because Perenco is not known to the majority of the population, and have been allowed to operate in silence by the regulator.

Whatever the reason, the operator, its partners and the regulators have been negligent in their responsibilities and have not been held accountable. At the very least, the public deserves to know what is being done to avoid more incidents going forward and what measures are being put in place to audit the operator's safety systems.

Javed Razack