Why does Government dislike La Brea?

The people of La Brea once had jobs, investment and services provided by the oil and related companies. I was born in Vessigny in 1938, admittedly privileged in an oil camp, but my memories are strong. In those days there were several operating industries around La Brea, a community sitting on a large bowl of very thick liquid. That is the truth, folks. The ongoing movement of the ground is caused by the very slow, almost “glacial” flow of the pitch in and surrounding the Pitch Lake. There are places in La Brea where the flow seems negligible, and buildings do not crack, warp and collapse. But in many other places, including sections of the Southern Main Road, the flow makes road upkeep impossible, and buildings lean and fall apart. But the people of La Brea know where to build the important buildings.

Employment came from oil drilling and production by Antilles Petroleum Company, and asphalt extraction at the Pitch Lake, trucked out for Trinidad’s roads, and “steam refined”, melted and placed in barrels for export to England. A small refinery at Brighton produced kerosene. Gas separated from the oil was piped through the oil camps, although not to the villages, for cooking and heating water. Rubber was harvested and exported from the rubber forest at Union Village.

Trinidad’s oldest manufacturing plant was also there. Van Leer Steel Works manufactured steel drums in a semi-automated plant at Brighton. Steel sheets were bent, rolled, crimped, and joined together in a noisy assembly line. These drums carried lubricants and asphalt around the world. They also became steel band instruments — and Southern Symphony was the best small steel band in the country back in the 1950s.

And La Brea was a major shipping hub. Oil was brought to Brighton jetty in small tankers from eastern Venezuela, transferred to huge tanks, and then shipped out in large tankers to America and England. The Brighton jetty also catered to the ships which came for asphalt, to build Britain’s roads, the “Brighton Buckets” — cable cars each carrying two barrels of asphalt, hummed past the camp and out to the end of the jetty. The Sobo Jetty, located at Point D’Or, shipped oil out from large tanks at Sobo, this oil coming via pipeline from Palo Seco. The Brighton Camp also boasted of the most beautiful nine-hole golf course in the island. Texaco Chairman, Augustus Long, one of the most powerful men in the petroleum world in the fifties and sixties, made his holiday home in Brighton, no grand castle, just a refurbished wooden bungalow.

So what happened? Where has all this gone? Globalisation shut down parts of it, but what was left the PNM destroyed. In the early 1990s it was decided that the LNG plant should be built there. Everyone in La Brea knew this could not happen. So after the beautiful golf course was bulldozed and part of the camp, the site was handed over to Bechtel for construction. Bechtel announced that the plant could not be built there, and the project was delayed for almost two years while the alternate site at Point Fortin was selected and prepared. We have never been told the losses incurred, although a Commission of Inquiry was promised, but never began.

Having escaped censure for that act of destruction, the Government in 2001, decided to destroy what was remaining — for the aluminium smelter, so they bulldozed several hundred acres of prime rubber forest with an exquisite range of wildlife. They did not bulldoze the old Antilles Camp, which only had 30 years of forest growth, much of it still scrub. They destroyed the rubber forest, destroying a potential light industry as well.

Government was less than open about job opportunities. They are now being told that the work required is too complex for them. But TT contractors and workmen built the LNG Plant, all except the process components. We did all the foundation works. But the deal with the Chinese was for Chinese labour, not ours. Why are all La Brea residents going to be checked for cancer on an ongoing basis? Does that sound right?

La Brea is a depressed area beyond belief. Most of you have never been into the village. But if you do, you will join me in asking: Why does Government hate the place so?