Shal­iza?Has­sanali

Good sense has pre­vailed. That was for­mer En­er­gy Min­is­ter Con­rad Enill's re­ac­tion to the Oil­fields Work­ers' Trade Union (OW­TU) call­ing off the strike at state-owned Petrotrin. Fol­low­ing 30 hours of con­cil­i­a­tion talks at the Labour Min­istry yes­ter­day, the union has agreed to a five per cent wage in­crease for the pe­ri­od 2011 to 2014 .

"The set­tle­ment has re­lieved a lot of ten­sion in the so­ci­ety. What this does is bring sta­bil­i­ty back in­to the coun­try which I think is a good thing. The whole ques­tion of cost . . . it has, in fact, car­ried up the cost like any oth­er com­pa­ny. They are go­ing to have an ex­pen­di­ture pro­file which they are go­ing to man­age," he said

Not­ing that em­ploy­ees' cost was just one el­e­ment of the set­tle­ment, Enill said when he weighed the five per cent against the neg­a­tive ef­fects the strike would have had on the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty and econ­o­my, "one can safe­ly say that good sense has pre­vailed and we are in a bet­ter place than we were be­fore this sit­u­a­tion."

Enill said the set­tle­ment re­flects a re­al­i­ty the coun­try is com­ing to terms with–that it is not busi­ness as usu­al.

"And to me, that is a more sig­nif­i­cant sig­nal in what has tak­en place. We are not where we were be­fore and what is now re­quired is for us to sit down and ac­tu­al­ly fig­ure out how all of us will get out of this mess to­geth­er."

Last week, Enill ap­pealed to Petrotrin's board, Gov­ern­ment and the OW­TU, come to an am­i­ca­ble set­tle­ment be­fore the union took strike ac­tion. He said he agreed with OW­TU pres­i­dent-gen­er­al An­cel Ro­get that Petrotrin go­ing for­ward has to be­come a vi­able and prof­itable com­pa­ny.

"He is ab­solute­ly cor­rect. But more than that, the prob­lem that Petrotrin has to­day is re­al­ly and tru­ly as a re­sult of two things. One is ex­plo­ration ac­tiv­i­ty which is pro­duc­tion and the oth­er is the price of oil, " he said.

Enill said if the price of oil changes to­mor­row, the prob­lem that cur­rent­ly ex­ists in Petrotrin with its neg­a­tive re­turns can turn in­to pos­i­tives.

"Petrotin is in that sit­u­a­tion where it has choic­es avail­able to it and it can turn around if the prices go up. And we ex­pect that the prices will go up, so this is tem­po­rary and short term in a lot of in­stances."

An­oth­er for­mer En­er­gy Min­is­ter, Kevin Ram­nar­ine, told the T&T Guardian he was not sur­prised that the OW­TU and Petrotrin's man­age­ment had come to an agree­ment and avert­ed a strike.

"For the sec­ond time in the last cou­ple days, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert has caved in. My con­cern is the im­pact on the wider na­tion­al econ­o­my and whether this will im­pact our cred­it rat­ings with S&P and Moody's," Ram­nar­ine said.