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Thursday, July 24, 2025

Govt pressing ahead with refinery sale

...Young says in­ter­est­ed in­dus­tri­al­ist is a very suc­cess­ful busi­ness­man

by

Akash Samaroo
397 days ago
20240622
Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley, right, greets Naveen Jindal, chairman of Jindal Steel and Power Ltd, at the Diplomatic Centre on Monday.

Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley, right, greets Naveen Jindal, chairman of Jindal Steel and Power Ltd, at the Diplomatic Centre on Monday.

OFFICE OF THE PRIME MINISTER

AKASH SAMA­ROO

Se­nior Re­porter

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

The Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries yes­ter­day de­scribed In­di­an in­dus­tri­al­ist Naveen Jin­dal, who has ex­pressed in­ter­est in the oil re­fin­ery at Pointe-a-Pierre, as a “very suc­cess­ful busi­ness­man” even though the bil­lion­aire is cur­rent­ly be­fore an In­di­an court on cor­rup­tion al­le­ga­tions.

Stu­art Young added that those charges were from “a very long time ago.”

On Mon­day, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley met with Jin­dal, the chair­man of Jin­dal Steel and Pow­er Ltd, at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre in St Ann’s.

Ac­cord­ing to the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, “Mr Jin­dal is in­ter­est­ed in the po­ten­tial of the Petrotrin re­fin­ery,” and that that in­ter­est formed part of dis­cus­sions with the Prime Min­is­ter.

A 2013 Forbes re­port soon sur­faced stat­ing that Jin­dal was al­leged­ly in­volved in a scan­dal called “Coal­gate” lead­ing to In­dia's fed­er­al po­lice fil­ing a case against Jin­dal Steel and Pow­er Ltd over coal min­ing rights.

The Prime Min­is­ter has al­ready said he was un­aware of those charges.

Fol­low­ing the sign­ing of ex­plo­ration and pro­duc­tion li­cences at the Min­istry of En­er­gy's In­ter­na­tion­al Wa­ter­front Cen­tre head­quar­ters on Wright­son Road yes­ter­day, Young said: “I would imag­ine that will play out as it should play out. From what I saw those charges are from a very long time ago, but I am in no po­si­tion to make any fur­ther com­ment on that.”

How­ev­er Young added, “From what I have seen as well, he is a suc­cess­ful busi­ness­man in In­dia, one of the top busi­ness­men, es­pe­cial­ly in the steel in­dus­try,” he said.

An­tic­i­pat­ing push­back to Jin­dal from the op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress, Young posit­ed that their ob­jec­tions would be hyp­o­crit­i­cal.

Young said, “What I find iron­ic is some of the very peo­ple I sit across the aisle from in Par­lia­ment are on bail and sub­ject to crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tions, so it is quite iron­ic to hear some of those com­ments. We have one who is out on $1 mil­lion bail. He is al­ways one who likes to com­ment on en­er­gy mat­ters. And then there are some oth­ers who they them­selves know there are crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tions on­go­ing.”

Jin­dal was al­so brought up by the Joint Trade Union Move­ment (JTUM) in his ad­dress to work­ers at the Char­lie King Junc­tion in La Brea on Labour Day. JTUM pres­i­dent gen­er­al An­cel Ro­get told union mem­bers that the bid­ding process, which the OW­TU was a part of, has been closed.

“But guess what, he is en­ter­tain­ing in the of­fi­cial res­i­dence, In­di­an busi­ness­man for the same re­fin­ery. I want to say this af­ter­noon the OW­TU will not stand idly by and al­low any­body to walk in here and take over the re­fin­ery. So In­di­an busi­ness­man or not, who­ev­er you may be we must be a part of go­ing for­ward in the op­er­a­tion of that re­fin­ery,” Ro­get warned.

How­ev­er, Min­is­ter Young said while that may be Ro­get’s po­si­tion, it is cer­tain­ly not the gov­ern­ment’s.

“We will con­tin­ue to push ahead and to pur­sue what needs to be pur­sued on be­half of the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go,” Young said.

When asked for an up­date on the sale of the re­fin­ery, the min­is­ter re­spond­ed, “The progress is very good. I can say at this stage there has been a lot of in­ter­est, and that in­ter­est is cur­rent­ly be­ing analysed. There have been a num­ber of pro­pos­als and I have been told by the ex­perts that those pro­pos­als are very favourable.”

The min­is­ter added, “But we have been here be­fore and there are a num­ber of fac­tors that have to be present for it to be a suc­cess. So I am wait­ing. At this stage, we are not in­volved at the gov­ern­ment lev­el as it is be­ing han­dled, as it al­ways is, by TPHL (Trinidad Pe­tro­le­um Hold­ings Ltd) and their ad­vi­sors. When there is some­thing there, they will for­ward to us at the gov­ern­ment.”

At a Pub­lic Ac­counts and En­ter­pris­es Com­mit­tee (PAEC) in April, TPHL was asked for an up­date on the process.

Paria gen­er­al man­ag­er Mush­taq Mo­hammed re­spond­ed, “Cur­rent­ly, we have had eight ex­pres­sions of in­ter­est for the pur­chase/lease/restart­ing of the re­fin­ery.”

Mo­hammed said they al­so re­ceived un­so­licit­ed pro­pos­als.

“Our process is that we ex­pect non-bind­ing of­fers from 10th May and from then we will re­view those of­fers and un­der­stand the way for­ward,” Mo­hammed said then.


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