Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries Dr Roodal Mooni­lal has called on for­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Stu­art Young to pub­licly con­demn what he de­scribed as a sus­pect­ed act of pipeline sab­o­tage in Bar­rack­pore, while dis­clos­ing claims from a res­i­dent sug­gest­ing pos­si­ble links to the Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM).

“I’ve seen the pic­tures of the pipeline, and it is clear­ly not ac­ci­den­tal. We are very con­cerned that there may be el­e­ments out there. One per­son in the area went so far as to sug­gest that it might be el­e­ments linked to the Op­po­si­tion PNM as well that are un­der­min­ing and sab­o­tag­ing our in­fra­struc­ture in those ar­eas be­cause in re­cent times we have had an uptick in oil pro­duc­tion,” Mooni­lal told re­porters in Clax­ton Bay yes­ter­day.

He said the mat­ter raised wider con­cerns about the se­cu­ri­ty of the coun­try’s en­er­gy in­fra­struc­ture and warned that the in­ci­dent could be part of a broad­er pat­tern of or­gan­ised ac­tiv­i­ty tar­get­ing the sec­tor.