State-owned Petrotrin has to be restructured if it is to survive and should be broken up into three separate entities. That is the proposal of the Oilfields Workers Trade Union whose President Ancil Roget said the union was prepared to work with the board and management if it agrees to the restructuring plan. "We have studied this thing and we know that unless you restructure the company, the company will continue to be what it is; a failing enterprise," Roget told the Business Guardian in a telephone interview on Monday. Asked if he accepted that any restructuring of Petrotrin was likely to lead to a loss of jobs, Roget said it would have the opposite effect. "No not at all. What we are proposing will not lead to a loss of jobs. In fact, what we are saying is, if you don't restructure, then you are likely to have people losing their jobs because of the poor performance of the enterprise." The OWTU's president general said the units should be refining and marketing, exploration and production and Trinmar operations. Roget said this would allow the management to focus on specific areas and allow for growth in each area. "What you have now here is a level of bureaucracy that does not allow for speedy and efficient decision making.
Under the OWTU's proposal, the companies will operate with its own management but will report to one board of directors. Roget argued that Petrotrin was set up in such a way to allow the former executive chairman Malcolm Jones to have full control of all aspects of its operations. The OWTU head said that Trinmar operations should never have been merged with that of Petrotrin and argued that it was the reason the offshore operations had shown such a major decline in crude production. "Imagine Trinmar's operations declined from 35,000 bo/d to 21,000 bo/d." Trinmar's production has been declining for some time including when it was operated by Texaco and before it was sold to the Government. Roget claimed that under the previous government, Petrotrin had become essentially a refining and marketing company. "The last set of managers concentrated almost exclusively on the refining and marketing aspect of the business and on the refinery upgrade to the point that our indigenous crude production suffered. They were concerned about the margins so they would buy 100,000 barrels of oil per day and then refining it at a higher price and thereby earn their profits. This was done despite the fact that if we increased our own crude production it would lead to us not being as vulnerable to crude price shocks."
Roget also claimed that the union went to the Government and the company and showed the management that it was possible to increase crude production and without spending significant sums of money and it has been successful with Trinmar producing an additional 4,500 bo/d. "We have moved Trinmar's production from 20,000 bo/d to in excess of 24,000 bo/d and this was done with little expenditure and was done outside of the drilling programme that the company has now embarked on." Roget said Petrotrin's total production could be increased to more than 50,000 bo/d without spending a lot of money and questioned what magic bullet lease operators have to suddenly produce wells that the company's management had decided to shut down. The Energy Minister Carolyn Seepersad-Bachan has instructed Petrotrin's management to increase its crude production by 8,000 bo/d and, only last week, the Central Bank Governor said Petrotrin was in the best position to boost local crude production.