Richard Lord

En­er­gy and En­er­gy Af­fairs Min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine has ad­mit­ted that to­mor­row's planned strike at the Pe­tro­le­um Co of T&T will hurt the State-owned com­pa­ny. Ram­nar­ine said so dur­ing yes­ter­day's post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence at the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter in St Clair. "One has to ac­cept that there is a cost to any in­dus­tri­al ac­tion like this," he added.

He said Petrotrin was at "a very del­i­cate point," as it was try­ing to main­tain its prof­itabil­i­ty af­ter heavy loss­es in 2009.

He said the com­pa­ny was in the process of im­ple­ment­ing sev­er­al projects to achieve that ob­jec­tive and a strike at this time would on­ly have a neg­a­tive im­pact on it.

"There was nev­er a good time for in­dus­tri­al ac­tion in the oil in­dus­try be­cause of the na­ture of he in­dus­try," he in­sist­ed

"There is go­ing to be an im­pact on Petrotrin's bot­tom line." He said Petrotrin was "one of the ma­jor tax­pay­ers in the coun­try, so there is ex­pect­ed to be a con­comi­tant im­pact on the tax­es they pay if there is an im­pact on the com­pa­ny's out­put." Oil­fields Work­ers' Trade Union, which rep­re­sents the work­ers, served strike no­tice on Petrotrin last Tues­day, and it would take ef­fect to­mor­row. Ram­nar­ine said the Gov­ern­ment, Petrotrin, Na­tion­al Pe­tro­le­um Mar­ket­ing Co (NP) and Unipet had been do­ing all they could to en­sure there was min­i­mal dis­rup­tion and in­con­ve­nience to the pub­lic dur­ing the strike.

He said talk about the im­por­ta­tion of fu­el was noth­ing new, as it had been done on at least two oc­ca­sions in the past six months. "On and off we have been im­port­ing fu­el to meet the na­tion's needs...so im­por­ta­tion of fu­el is noth­ing strange or new," Ram­nar­ine told re­porters. He as­sured that there was ad­e­quate sup­ply of fu­el and ad­vised mo­torists against en­gag­ing in pan­ic buy­ing. He said sol­diers were be­ing utilised by Petrotrin "to main­tain or­der" and the na­tion's as­sets at Petrotrin. Ram­nar­ine was the on­ly min­is­ter at the news con­fer­ence.