By John Myers Jr., Staff ReporterTHE CAUSE of an explosion at the state-owned oil refinery, Petrojam, on Wednesday, will not be known until investigations into the incident are completed in the next two weeks, according to Phillip Paulwell, minister of commerce, science and technology.
At that time, the company's insurers, should finish their assessment of the damage to the plant, he said.
PORTFOLIO RESPONSIBILITY
Yesterday, the minister, who has portfolio responsibility for the petroleum sector, said there should be no significant increase in oil prices. "We have always priced at the world market price so unless there are further increases at the world market level, we ought not to see dramatic increases in prices locally," he told The Gleaner.
The minister, however, expressed concern about the amount of money the government will be spending to procure finished petroleum products. "Because we are now going to be procuring more finished product, as a country we are going to be expending more foreign exchange... we do have a difficulty in expending greater foreign exchange on petroleum products," he noted.
Meanwhile, Winston Watson, managing director of Petrojam, located on Marcus Garvey Drive, Kingston, told The Gleaner yesterday that while the company's engineers, with the assistance of a team of engineers from the United States, have started their assessment, "We pretty much can't touch too much because the insurers will also be sending their engineers to look at the damage so we can't really move a lot of things." He said one engineer from the U.S. arrived yesterday.
He is estimating that "within two weeks we should have their final report of what has caused it, what has to be done and what the (extent of) the damage is."
But Mr. Paulwell added that he was expecting a preliminary report on the incident between Tuesday and Wednesday of next week.
Early Wednesday morning, one of 10 processing towers at the Petrojam refinery was destroyed by fire of unknown origin. The company's employees, with assistance from the Fire Department, quickly contained the fire, which resulted in an immediate lockdown of the refinery.
INSURED
The oil refinery is insured by several companies in the United Kingdom and other parts of Europe, for just under US$1 million ($60 million). Mr. Watson said the payout would depend on the findings of the assessment.
Mr. Watson said the loading docks have since been reopened and are facilitating delivery. He said the refinery has three weeks supply of petrol in stock and has assured that there would be no shortage at the pumps. Mr. Watson said the first shipment of finished petroleum products should arrive in the island from Venezuela on Tuesday, with subsequent supplies from Trinidad.
