Asha Javeed

Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go (Petrotrin) post­ed a $167 mil­lion loss in its fi­nan­cial state­ment for 2010, even though the state-owned en­er­gy com­pa­ny record­ed strong rev­enues and high oil prices.Last year's loss, which is for the year end­ed Sep­tem­ber 30, 2010, com­pares favourably with 2009's deficit of $714 mil­lion.In his re­port, Petrotrin chair­man Lind­say Gillette stat­ed that the com­pa­ny de­cid­ed as a "mat­ter of pru­dence to im­pair the full val­ue of the World Gas to Liq­uid Ltd (WGTL) as­set that re­mained in the books."As a re­sult, Petrotrin faced im­pair­ment loss of $1,118 mil­lion re­lat­ed to loans re­ceiv­able from its as­so­ci­at­ed com­pa­ny, WGTL.Gillette ob­served that 2010 was a "re­turn to good mar­gins and healthy net earn­ings as prices of crude oil and re­fined prod­ucts re­bound­ed."Gillette stat­ed that with oil prices av­er­ag­ing US$77.29, it was a wel­come re­turn to prof­it mode.The com­pa­ny ob­served that rev­enues of $25,942 mil­lion were an in­crease of 17.8 per cent when com­pared to 2009."Re­fin­ery through­put and sales vol­umes were low­er than in 2010 com­pared to 2009 while gov­ern­ment take in­creased as a re­sult of high­er prices," Gillette not­ed.