An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

The Gov­ern­ment’s plan to restart the Petrotrin re­fin­ery at Pointe-a-Pierre has drawn sup­port from in­dus­try stake­hold­ers, but for­mer En­er­gy min­is­ter Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan is ques­tion­ing the cost of the pro­posed restart, the avail­abil­i­ty of crude oil and ac­cess to ex­port mar­kets.

Dur­ing yes­ter­day’s 2027 Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo an­nounced that the Gov­ern­ment was eval­u­at­ing pro­pos­als from a short­list of lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al in­vestors for a phased restart of the Guaracara Re­fin­ery.

“We will restart the re­fin­ery,” Tan­coo de­clared, de­scrib­ing the fa­cil­i­ty as more than a dor­mant in­dus­tri­al as­set, but a crit­i­cal part of na­tion­al fu­el se­cu­ri­ty and the eco­nom­ic sur­vival of com­mu­ni­ties that de­pend­ed on its op­er­a­tions.

He ar­gued that the re­fin­ery’s clo­sure in 2018 had af­fect­ed thou­sands of res­i­dents, down­stream con­trac­tors and small busi­ness­es, in­clud­ing dou­bles ven­dors and roti shops, from Cou­va to Ce­dros.

Tan­coo al­so crit­i­cised the pre­vi­ous Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment ad­min­is­tra­tion, con­tend­ing that T&T had moved from be­ing a net ex­porter of re­fined pe­tro­le­um prod­ucts to im­port­ing the diesel, gaso­line, pitch oil and en­gine oil used lo­cal­ly.

“Let me be clear, we will ap­proach the restart of this na­tion­al as­set with fis­cal dis­ci­pline,” he said.

Seep­er­sad-Bachan, how­ev­er, ar­gued that crit­i­cal de­tails about the pro­pos­al re­mained un­clear.

“It rais­es sev­er­al im­por­tant ques­tions as to the re­fi­nanc­ing of that restart, what cap­i­tal ex­pen­di­ture will be re­quired, and still we need to know what will be the crude sup­ply arrange­ments,” she said.

Mean­while, the Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gy Ser­vices Ltd (PESL) wel­comed the Gov­ern­ment’s com­mit­ment, en­dors­ing the phased ap­proach as a prac­ti­cal route to a faster and more ef­fec­tive restart.

The com­pa­ny de­scribed the re­fin­ery as crit­i­cal to strength­en­ing en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty, re­vi­tal­is­ing eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty, cre­at­ing em­ploy­ment and restor­ing con­fi­dence among com­mu­ni­ties and busi­ness­es his­tor­i­cal­ly de­pen­dent on re­fin­ery op­er­a­tions.

The En­er­gy Cham­ber al­so wel­comed the de­ci­sion, stress­ing the im­por­tance of a com­mer­cial­ly vi­able and ful­ly fi­nanced arrange­ment.

Tan­coo al­so out­lined the Gov­ern­ment’s plans to at­tract in­vest­ment and re­verse de­clin­ing oil pro­duc­tion.

He re­port­ed that oil pro­duc­tion av­er­aged 78,683 bar­rels per day in 2015 but had fall­en to 52,357 bar­rels per day in April 2025.

He an­nounced that the Gov­ern­ment had se­cured a po­ten­tial US$21 bil­lion in­vest­ment from Exxon­Mo­bil in oil ex­plo­ration and pro­duc­tion with­in four months of tak­ing of­fice.

The com­pa­ny’s three-di­men­sion­al seis­mic ac­qui­si­tion pro­gramme in the ul­tra-deep-wa­ter block has been com­plet­ed, with analy­sis to iden­ti­fy po­ten­tial drilling tar­gets at an ad­vanced stage.

Tan­coo al­so iden­ti­fied in­ter­est from oth­er in­ter­na­tion­al op­er­a­tors, in­clud­ing Chevron, Curlew Mid-stream and Oc­ci­den­tal Pe­tro­le­um, as ev­i­dence of re­newed con­fi­dence in the coun­try’s en­er­gy po­ten­tial.

Up­stream cap­i­tal ex­pen­di­ture is es­ti­mat­ed to ex­ceed US$2 bil­lion in 2026, rise to US$2.3 bil­lion in 2027 and US$2.6 bil­lion in 2028, then de­cline to US$1.4 bil­lion in 2029.

But Seep­er­sad-Bachan cau­tioned against treat­ing in­vest­ment an­nounce­ments and in­di­vid­ual project pro­duc­tion ca­pac­i­ties as guar­an­teed in­creas­es in na­tion­al gas out­put.

She al­so ques­tioned the ab­sence of spe­cif­ic fis­cal in­cen­tives to mod­ernise ex­ist­ing petro­chem­i­cal plants, im­prove gas util­i­sa­tion and re­duce en­er­gy con­sump­tion.

The for­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter main­tained that the down­stream sec­tor’s dif­fi­cul­ties in­volved not on­ly gas avail­abil­i­ty, but al­so gas prices, sup­ply re­li­a­bil­i­ty and age­ing in­dus­tri­al in­fra­struc­ture.

She sug­gest­ed en­hanced cap­i­tal al­lowances, in­vest­ment tax cred­its and du­ty con­ces­sions for equip­ment that im­proves gas util­i­sa­tion and en­er­gy ef­fi­cien­cy.

Seep­er­sad-Bachan al­so raised con­cerns about the pro­posed in­crease in the Un­em­ploy­ment Levy on pe­tro­le­um com­pa­nies from five per cent to eight per cent, ques­tion­ing whether the ad­di­tion­al tax bur­den could un­der­mine in­vest­ment in ma­ture fields and fu­ture ex­plo­ration.

The En­er­gy Cham­ber al­so urged the Gov­ern­ment to re­con­sid­er the levy in­crease, re­view re­stric­tions on car­ried-for­ward loss­es and con­sult the in­dus­try be­fore the mea­sures take ef­fect in Jan­u­ary 2027. It called for a clear timetable to ad­dress $10.6 bil­lion in out­stand­ing VAT re­funds dur­ing fis­cal 2027.