Rose­marie Sant

En­vi­ron­men­tal­ist Dr Wayne Kublals­ingh says Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley would be hard pressed to get the Alutrint smelter go­ing again be­cause the mat­ter is still "be­fore the courts and would re­quire years for re­cer­ti­fi­ca­tion."

Row­ley told a meet­ing in Point Fortin last Wednes­day that an alu­mini­um project might be restart­ed by the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment Gov­ern­ment once the "eco­nom­ics looked good."

But he hint­ed that the project had noth­ing to do with smelter. He said "if any op­por­tu­ni­ty aris­es for us to im­port in­gots, not smelt­ing baux­ite, but im­port­ing alu­mini­um in­gots, and the eco­nom­ics look good, this PNM gov­ern­ment will go back to the busi­ness once the num­bers look right."

The T&T Guardian had re­port­ed ex­clu­sive­ly in April that Sur­al of­fi­cials had come to Trinidad to lob­by the gov­ern­ment to restart the Alutech project at the E-Teck park in Waller­field to make alu­mini­um rims for mo­tor ve­hi­cles. The down­stream in­dus­try project was halt­ed by the for­mer Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment in 2010.

Kublals­ingh told the T&T Guardian "the mat­ter is buried deep in the court and if picked up it would re­quire years for re-cer­ti­fi­ca­tion." He said "the Row­ley gov­ern­ment is now in se­ri­ous fi­nan­cial dif­fi­cul­ty over the smelter. The Chi­nese are mak­ing a case for fat com­pen­sa­tion, they did not ter­mi­nate the con­tract nor did the gov­ern­ment, it was the courts."

He al­so ar­gued that giv­en the cur­rent state of glob­al oil and gas mar­kets pur­su­ing smelter would be "un­eco­nom­ic. No gov­ern­ment, un­less sui­ci­dal would go for it. It is clad in the iron cof­fin of his­to­ry."Kublals­ingh, a for­mer Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies lec­tur­er, had led sev­er­al protests against the smelter plant.

Dur­ing their vis­it in April, Sur­al's Pres­i­dent Al­fre­do Riv­iere, Di­rec­tor of the Sur­al Group Edgard Romero and Alutech Di­rec­tor Dave Bhai­joo made a pre­sen­ta­tion to the Prime Min­is­ter and his team which in­clud­ed then en­er­gy min­is­ter Nicole Olivierre on the "pro­duc­tion of high-qual­i­ty alu­mini­um down­stream prod­ucts."

On the po­lit­i­cal plat­form in Pt Fortin last Wednes­day, Row­ley said oth­er coun­tries had in­vest­ed in alu­mini­um plants and "their busi­ness is boom­ing and ex­pand­ing and they sell­ing al­loy wheels to the mo­tor in­dus­try for the world and earn­ing for­eign ex­change."

But while the gov­ern­ment was look­ing to re­sume the Alutech project, gov­ern­ment sources con­firmed that the orig­i­nal planned smelter is "def­i­nite­ly off the ta­ble and will not be restart­ed." If the Alutech project is to be restart­ed it will use "im­port­ed in­gots" for the pro­duc­tion of the down­stream prod­ucts, one of­fi­cial said.

Alutrint was to have pro­duced hot met­al from the smelter for Alutech to make a num­ber of down­stream prod­ucts, in­clud­ing rims for ve­hi­cles.

The Prime Min­is­ter said he was con­cerned that US$200 mil­lion owed to the Chi­nese firm con­nect­ed with the failed Alutrint project had not been paid. A Chi­nese team met with the Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert last Wednes­day and it is ex­pect­ed that there will be fur­ther dis­cus­sions when the Prime Min­ster vis­its Chi­na in April next year.

Fi­nanc­ing for the smelter project was sourced through the Chi­na Ex­im Bank which was pro­vid­ing the US$66.6 mil­lion dol­lar cred­it fa­cil­i­ty for the con­struc­tion of the project. Ef­forts to get clar­i­fi­ca­tion from Im­bert proved fu­tile.

Back­ground

The smelter project was shut down by the High Court in 2009 af­ter Jus­tice Mi­ra Dean-Ar­mor­er ruled then that the de­ci­sion of the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty to grant ap­proval for con­struc­tion of the smelter plant was made in a "pro­ce­du­ral­ly ir­reg­u­lar man­ner." She point­ed to the lack of pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion and the fail­ure to find prop­er dis­pos­al for Spent Pot Lin­ing a tox­ic by prod­uct of alu­mini­um smelt­ing.

The then Patrick Man­ning gov­ern­ment ap­pealed the de­ci­sion of Jus­tice Dean-Ar­mor­er, but the Ap­peal Court head­ed by Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie is yet to de­liv­er judg­ment in the mat­ter.