The families of four divers who went missing while working on a 36-inch underwater crude oil pipeline in Pointe-a-Pierre on Friday, had their hopes for the men's successful rescue dashed when officials of Paria Fuel Trading Company announced that they are presumed dead.

The grim announcement was made by Paria chairman Newman George, general manager Mushtaq Mohammed at terminal operations manager Collin Piper at a news conference at the former Petrotrin staff club in Pointe-a-Pierre shortly after 8 pm on Sunday.

It brought to an end an agonising wait for the relatives of Fyzal Kurban, Rishi Nagassar, Kazim Ali Jr and Yusuf Henry.

A fifth diver in the group, Christopher Boodram, was rescued on Friday. He is in a stable condition at the San Fernando General Hospital.

George said, "The operation has now moved from rescue to recovery."

This was based on consultation among Paria, the coast guard, LMCS Ltd (the divers' employer), expert divers and other stakeholders, after it was determined the probability of the men's survival was low.

Expressing the company's condolences to the divers' families, George said, "This has not been an easy decision."

A water displacement process will be used to gently move the divers' bodies along the pipeline 'so they can be collected with dignity and respect' at Berth #6 where the incident happened, and returned to their families.

After saying the company had been doing its best to keep the families and the public informed about the efforts to find the missing divers, George said the news that they were dead was shared with relatives before the news conference.

"We did not take that decision (to announce the shift from rescue to recovery) unilaterally."

The time or times of death of the divers could not be determined.

Mohammed said, "We have no concrete evidence of this."

While the recovery operation is ongoing, George said it would not be until Monday when sufficient water pressure is built up inside the pipeline to ease the bodies along.

He could not say the timeframe for recovering the bodies, but reiterated it will be done in a respectful and dignified manner.

George and Mohammed said an investigating team will be assembled to determine the cause of the incident.

While admitting there were emergency divers on standby to help, Mohammed and Piper said the advice emerging from the consultation amongst the stakeholders at the time was that it was too risky to send divers in to find the missing men.

Mohammed and George declined to respond to claims from relatives and other people that the rescue response was too slow or that Paria was negligent or liable for the incident. George said the investigation will determine that.

Mohammed said because of the nature of Paria's fuel operations, it would not be wise to allow relatives to wait at the location of the recovery site.

News that the divers were dead, and efforts were now being made to recover their bodies, came as a bitter blow to relatives who had been waiting in a car park outside of H