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Friday, July 11, 2025

Petrotrin wages higher

by

20170107

Wages at the state-owned Pe­tro­le­um com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go (Petrotrin) are not on par with oth­er com­par­a­tive en­er­gy com­pa­nies.

In many cas­es, Petrotrin salaries are far high­er.

This in­for­ma­tion was shared in an on­line ar­ti­cle by the En­er­gy Cham­ber on Fri­day night, putting an­oth­er spot­light on work­ers' earn­ings amidst de­mands for a high­er salary and the loom­ing threat of a strike set to be­gin to­mor­row.

Ear­li­er this week, cit­i­zens ex­pressed sur­prise and in some cas­es con­dem­na­tion over what they felt were ex­or­bi­tant salaries for clean­ers, who were said to be mak­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly $10,000 month­ly.

This is a far cry from clean­ers in the non-en­er­gy sec­tors, who make less than half of that for the same pay pe­ri­od.

Ac­cord­ing to the En­er­gy Cham­ber's da­ta, a fore­man at Petrotrin earns ap­prox­i­mate­ly $22,000 month­ly com­pared to a fore­man in the pri­vate oil sec­tor who earned just above $12,000.

For se­nior lev­el jobs how­ev­er, the trend changes, with Petrotrin se­nior man­agers, in many cas­es earn­ing less than their coun­ter­parts in the pri­vate oil sec­tor.

A se­nior en­gi­neer at Petrotrin earns a min­i­mum of around $30,000, while the in­dus­try av­er­age is just un­der $45,000, a sig­nif­i­cant gap.

The com­par­i­son was made us­ing the cur­rent salaries of Petrotrin work­ers (with con­sol­i­dat­ed CO­LA) and six lo­cal com­pa­nies plus one joint ven­ture be­tween a lo­cal and an in­ter­na­tion­al com­pa­ny.

None of the multi­na­tion­al firms, such as BP or BHP Bili­ton were used in the sur­vey. The En­er­gy Cham­bers re­port showed that blue col­lar work­ers at the state-owned com­pa­ny make sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er wages, some­times twice the amount of oth­er en­er­gy com­pa­nies.

Ac­cord­ing to the cham­ber, at the su­per­vi­so­ry and pro­fes­sion­al lev­el, Petrotrin rates are typ­i­cal­ly high­er than the oth­er ma­jor oil, gas and petro­chem­i­cal com­pa­nies.

How­ev­er, at se­nior en­gi­neer lev­els and above Petrotrin rates are low­er.

The salaries of ex­ec­u­tive man­age­ment at both Petrotrin and pri­vate lo­cal com­pa­nies were not re­port­ed by the cham­ber, how­ev­er the Sun­day Guardian un­der­stands that the salary for the Pres­i­dent of Petrotrin stands near $180,000, while the com­pa­nies Vice Pres­i­dent earns near $120,000.

Still in an in­dus­try that fo­cus­es on in­ter­na­tion­al trade, Petrotrin's salaries are be­low the in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dard.

An elec­tri­cian, ac­cord­ing to the 2015 Oil and Gas Glob­al Salary Guide, would earn US$ 4,041 month­ly, (TT$28,000) but nei­ther Petrotrin or pri­vate lo­cal con­trac­tors pay any­where near that amount.

Fur­ther, the dis­par­i­ty in wages be­tween blue col­lar and se­nior em­ploy­ees is wider in the lo­cal pri­vate oil sec­tor than at Petrotrin, though the cham­ber not­ed that Petrotrin staff al­so "tend to have gen­er­ous ben­e­fit pack­ages that can sig­nif­i­cant­ly in­crease their to­tal com­pen­sa­tion pack­age."


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