One source insisted that at one point there was only one day’s supply of cooking gas left.

The senior refinery official further revealed that if proper precautionary measures were not taken during repairs, there could have been a major explosion with the resultant loss of lives.

He made the stunning revelation: “A valve; if the company had bought a valve costing a relatively miniscule sum when the complaint was first made about its malfunctioning fours years ago, this major loss could have been avoided.

“But because of that inefficiency, a situation occurred that could have turned fatal; the emergency shutdown could have become deadly for some workers, if...”

He added: “Some units have been brought back into service, but as we speak, some of the plants in the refinery are still down or running at reduced capacity.

“The well-known Cat Cracker Plant was one of the main casualties; it was brought back into operation last Monday, but at reduced capacity.”

He added: “The problematic situation began to develop at the Central Steam Plant (CSP) sometime on the morning of December 7.

“And since CSP supplies steam, air and electricity, which are all critical in the running of the refinery, you can understand why some of us quickly became concerned.

“CSP uses condensate to cool its boilers, since chlorinated or untreated water will speed up deterioration in the boilers.

“As such, there must always be a certain level of condensate.

“There is a process involving exhaust steam, turbines and pumps which combine to produce a pure and clean supply of condensate.”

He continued: “However, the level of condensate went low, causing the safety device to trip one of the pumps.

“After that first pump trip, they tried to start a second pump but that also trip because the level of condensate was still low.

“If the level is low, there is another means to bring it back up but that couldn’t be done.

“It couldn’t be done since the same valve the company refused to replace four years ago was malfunctioning.

“In addition, since the situation wasn’t monitored properly as a result of slackness on the part of certain top officials, other critical equipment went out of service.

“For instance, the pumps push the condensate to the boilers to keep them cool.

“But if the condensate level remains low, the boilers would not be able to get condensate, their temperature will go up and that will cause them to shutdown.

“There are some 15 boilers and when one was forced to shut down as initially happened at CSP because it was starved for condensate, it caused an increased load on the others, which caused them to overload and also forced them to trip and shut down in a domino effect.”

He continued: “The boilers also supply air or steam to the instruments hooked up to the computers in the control room.

“But the computer screens went blank and caused panic.

“It could have caused a major disaster because the operators could no longer use the computers to monitor what was happening in the refinery and they had to revert to old technology.

“The situation was critical.

“What eventually happened was the loss of condensate and steam, and eventually the boilers created chaos and caused an emergency shutdown of the Cat Cracker, Gas Con, Alkylation, #1 Topping and #1 CDU units.

“The D3 and D4 columns, which take dirty gasoline and clean it up, were also forced to shut down.

“As such, the entire East Complex of the refinery was forced to be shut down.

“In the North Area, the #8 Topping, the Hydro Treater, Visc Breaker and #3 and 4 VDC units were also forced to be shutdown.

“And in the South Area, the Rexformer, Hydrogen Plant and Poly Units were also all shutdown.

“With all those units shutting down so suddenly, Petrotrin had to bring in maintenance workers to carry out emergency work.

“In one instance, they had to do certain tightness checks where there is a build up of oxygen and steam, which if not done properly could have caused a massive explosion with fatal consequences.”

He added: “It took a few days to get CSP working again.

“And this time around, after four years, the particular valve in CSP that needed changing was finally changed.

“If that valve was operating properly, it would have gotten the condensate level back up at the critical moment when it went low and prevented all those shutdowns.”

He revealed: “The losses were huge.

“In the East Area alone, with the Cat Cracker Plant and the others, Petrotrin could have lost anything upwards of $40 million.

“But all told, Petrotrin could have lost upwards of $100m, which is a conservative figure.

“The company had to pay maintenance workers, operators and other high-salaried personnel overtime to work three shifts continuously over the period.

“They also had to hire contractors on a 24-hour basis to assist in getting the units back up.

“The downtime of the plants also caused millions of dollars in losses.”

He continued: “The Cat Cracker Plant usually runs at 35,000 barrels per day (bpd).

“However, since it was brought back up after the shutdown, it was only doing 20,000 bpd by midweek and by Friday it had reached 27,000bpd.

“It is not yet getting sufficient gas oil and feed stock from the #1, 2, and 3 Vacuum Units and the #8 Topping Plants, since these units were also down.

“The potential LPG shortage came about because of the Cat Cracker being down.”