Nei­ther Gov­ern­ment sources—or the Op­po­si­tion—an­tic­i­pate Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert will in­crease the fu­el price in Mon­day's mid-year re­view.

But on­ly Im­bert's 45-minute (plus 15 ex­tra min­utes) re­view state­ment will say for sure.

In his 2019 Bud­get he had said that if oil prices re­mained above (US)$70 in this fis­cal year the fu­el sub­sidy would ex­ceed $1.5b in 2019 if there's no "ad­just­ment to the re­tail prices at the pump".

At Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion last Oc­to­ber oil prices were (US)$73.43 and at that price, Im­bert said the fu­el sub­sidy in 2019 was es­ti­mat­ed to cost the Trea­sury $1.5b "...Mon­ey we sim­ply don't have."

He had pegged the Bud­get on a (US)$65 oil price, but fol­low­ing price drop in Jan­u­ary, he had ad­just­ed it to (US)$55 and telegraphed Bud­get pro­gramme re­vi­sion.

Yes­ter­day's oil price was (US)$61.66 (WTI crude) per bar­rel and (US)$70.62 (Brent crude)—un­der the 2018 (US)$73 price he was con­cerned about.

Im­bert's pro­nounce­ments on the per­for­mance on the $51b Bud­get over the last six months will be de­liv­ered in Par­lia­ment from 1.30 pm. He can get ex­tra time be­yond the al­lot­ted 60 min­utes' speak­ing time if nec­es­sary. Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar will have equal re­ply time.

Last Fri­day, gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials said they would be sur­prised if fu­el is raised, con­sid­er­ing the elec­tion cli­mate, eco­nom­ic is­sues the pub­lic has been cop­ing with and be­cause of Im­bert's re­cent "turn­around" de­c­la­ra­tions.

UNC whip David Lee added, "He'll hard­ly have room to hike fu­el prices be­cause of up­com­ing elec­tions. If he does, it'll be in­ter­est­ing to see what he does to bal­ance it. His rev­enues are down and de­spite his boasts IMF and World Bank are re­vis­ing their as­sess­ment on T&T, we've nev­er heard of them get­ting fig­ures wrong.

"We'll have to see if he'll use Na­tion­al In­vest­ment Fund bonds or bor­rows from the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund. The Bud­get's six 'Game Chang­ers' are no longer in­tact and Gov­ern­ment's bor­rowed $700m from the In­fra­struc­ture De­vel­op­ment Fund to pay Petrotrin re­trench­ment ben­e­fits. So we are await­ing ex­pla­na­tion on his 'turn­around'."

Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Kaz­im Ho­sein be­lieves Im­bert's man­age­ment did well con­sid­er­ing what the PNM faced on as­sum­ing of­fice. "I'll have to say, yes. We just have to wait to see what he presents."

Ho­sein be­lieves Gov­ern­ment's Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment re­form—which he said peo­ple are press­ing for—will be a 'game chang­er'. "It's a promise and the re­form will come."

6 game-chang­ers

Gov­ern­ment's 2019 Bud­get banked on six 'game chang­ers'—as part of what the Bud­get de­scribed as strate­gic "con­fi­dence in­duc­ing de­vel­op­ments" which would make Gov­ern­ment's trans­for­ma­tion "an as­sured re­al­i­ty".

Here's how they were de­scribed in the Bud­get and where checks re­veal they are now:

• T&T/VENEZUELA DRAG­ON GAS PROJECT—The Bud­get stat­ed it would start with 150.0 mil­lion stan­dard cu­bic feet of gas which would "re­turn our petro­chem­i­cal sec­tor to full pro­duc­tion, mak­ing the sec­tor a much more at­trac­tive source of in­vest­ment".

Gov­ern­ment has ac­knowl­edged it's de­layed fol­low­ing Venezue­lan un­rest. Apart from the term sheet agree­ment, no legal­ly bind­ing doc­u­ment was signed. Le­gal ad­vice was be­ing sought on whether US sanc­tions against Venezuela may af­fect it.

• SAN­DALS RE­SORT—de­scribed as "cat­alyt­ic tourism event...rep­re­sent­ing rad­i­cal stim­u­lus for To­ba­go tourism pro­vid­ing plat­form for sus­tain­able eco­nom­ic/so­cial de­vel­op­ment". Af­ter Jan­u­ary an­nounce­ment it was out, Gov­ern­ment sig­nalled there may be al­ter­na­tives. Tourism of­fi­cials said Fri­day, ren­o­va­tions are about to start on Tur­tle Beach by Cana­da's Sun­wing group which pro­posed up­grade. That group al­so ex­pressed in­ter­est in the Mag­dale­na Grand, but cur­rent ne­go­ti­a­tions for an op­er­a­tor were al­ready in train and that's be­ing seen through to com­ple­tion, ex­pect­ed next month.

• TWO AUS­TRALIAN FER­RIES—to re­vi­talise the sea bridge due mid-2020. Yes­ter­day the Gov­ern­ment con­firmed work com­menced on the two Cape Class ves­sels with the cut­ting of the steel weeks ago and the Aus­tralia Gov­ern­ment had a cer­e­mo­ny re­gard­ing this.

• BUOY­AN­CY OF CAP­I­TAL MAR­KETS—Fol­low­ing the suc­cess of the $4B Na­tion­al In­vest­ment Fund bond, Gov­ern­ment is mov­ing to a $1b Hous­ing bond soon.

• LA BREA DRY DOCK & SHIP­BUILD­ING/RE­PAIR FA­CIL­I­TY—to gen­er­ate al­most 16,000 in­di­rect and di­rect jobs and pro­ject­ed to "en­er­gise for­mer­ly oil-based south/west com­mu­ni­ties". Launched last year, un­der con­struc­tion.

• RE­FORMED PETROTRIN—with suc­ces­sor en­ti­ties con­cen­trat­ing on ex­plo­ration/pro­duc­tion and boost­ing cur­rent pro­duc­tion lev­el of 40,000 bar­rels per day, "the Forex earn­ing of which would ben­e­fit cit­i­zens…we're tak­ing steps to en­sure work­ers are ap­pro­pri­ate­ly com­pen­sat­ed…"

OW­TU's sec­ond vice pres­i­dent Carl­ton Gib­son, said Fri­day for­mer work­ers still have open-end­ed is­sues in­clud­ing at In­land Rev­enue. BIR 's pro­cess­ing claims and OW­TU's await­ing fi­nal word on when work­ers will re­ceive monies. Mat­ters re­gard­ing the two-year med­ical plan are in the In­dus­tri­al Court as are oth­er out­stand­ing is­sues, in­clud­ing those pri­or to Petrotrin's clo­sure. While OW­TU awaits word on its bid for the re­fin­ery, Gib­son said some work­ers have found jobs at Her­itage and Paria Fu­el Trad­ing, some mi­grat­ed to Cana­da and the US, "...But many are still un­em­ployed."

Ju­ly con­clu­sion for re­fin­ery RF­Ps

With the suc­ces­sor en­ti­ties to Petrotrin among the six bud­getary game chang­ers, tran­si­tion team chair­man LISA ALI replied to ques­tions on the sta­tus of cur­rent is­sues con­cern­ing the sit­u­a­tion. Ali leads Trinidad Pe­tro­le­um Hold­ings Lim­it­ed’s (TPHL) trans­for­ma­tion team and is the in­ter­im Ter­mi­nal and Trad­ing Gen­er­al Man­ag­er for Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed, one of the three suc­ces­sors Petrotrin sub­sidiaries.

She holds a De­gree in Chem­istry and An­a­lyt­i­cal Chem­istry (Hons) and a Mas­ters in Busi­ness Ad­min­is­tra­tion from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies. She has a tech­ni­cal back­ground; hav­ing worked for 16 years in man­u­fac­tur­ing and petro­chem­i­cal in­dus­tries in se­nior Tech­ni­cal and ex­ec­u­tive roles work­ing at lo­cal­ly-based methanol plants. In 2006, she tran­si­tioned in­to Hu­man Re­sources (HR) work­ing as HR Vice Pres­i­dent for BP’s Trinidad busi­ness where she im­ple­ment­ed a na­tion­al­i­sa­tion work­force strat­e­gy and pro­gressed BP Trinidad’s di­ver­si­ty and in­clu­sion agen­da.

Ali sub­se­quent­ly moved in­to the oil and gas in­dus­try spend­ing over 14 years, hold­ing po­si­tions both lo­cal­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. She’s un­der­tak­en as­sign­ments in Brazil as the HR Vice Pres­i­dent; the UK and the Mid­dle East

—and has a wide range of ex­pe­ri­ence, hav­ing man­aged a num­ber of large-scale glob­al busi­ness trans­for­ma­tions. Her po­si­tion pri­or to re­turn­ing to T&T was Hu­man Re­sources Vice Pres­i­dent for BP (Up­stream, Tal­ent and Learn­ing).

Q: Af­ter Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert pro­ject­ed the re­fin­ery would be leased to an “...ac­cept­able op­er­a­tor by year-end”, what’s the cur­rent sta­tus of Re­quests for Pro­pos­als for it?

A: We’re cur­rent­ly in the non-bind­ing first round phase of the trans­ac­tion. This phase in­volved open in­vi­ta­tion to po­ten­tial buy­ers fol­lowed by the sign­ing of non-dis­clo­sure agree­ments by in­ter­est­ed par­ties, who were then al­lowed ac­cess to our da­ta room to re­view tech­ni­cal and fi­nan­cial in­for­ma­tion to pre­pare their non-bind­ing pro­pos­als.

Q: From which coun­tries have ex­pres­sions of in­ter­est come?

A: We have glob­al in­ter­est and par­tic­i­pa­tion in the process in­clud­ing lo­cal par­ties. We’re at a con­fi­den­tial stage and un­able to share fur­ther de­tails cur­rent­ly.

Q: How many, if any, of in­ter­est­ed par­ties have ex­pressed in­ter­est in some arrange­ment with Paria? Is a sep­a­rate RFP out for Paria?

A: Paria com­pris­es as­sets that were part of the in­te­grat­ed oil com­pa­ny. Any­one op­er­at­ing the re­fin­ery would need ac­cess to the ter­mi­nal as­sets to bring crude in­to T&T and ex­port fin­ished prod­uct as part of their busi­ness. Paria’s as­sets have there­fore been in­clud­ed in the RFP to al­low for the widest range of pro­pos­als, there­by en­sur­ing T&T gets best pos­si­ble val­ue for its as­sets. There is one RFP.

Q: How far has the process pro­gressed?

A: We’re cur­rent­ly in the non-bind­ing first round stage; 25 of the 70 par­ties have signed con­fi­den­tial­i­ty agree­ments.

Q: When is a de­ci­sion like­ly on the re­fin­ery; will it take longer if the in­cor­po­ra­tion of Paria is fac­tored in?

A: We’re work­ing with a time­line of end of Ju­ly to have a de­ci­sion on a pre­ferred par­ty. How­ev­er, it’s dif­fi­cult to say in the ab­sence of con­crete pro­pos­als. We want to en­sure an ef­fi­cient process, ac­quir­ing com­pet­i­tive bids and de­riv­ing the best val­ue for the coun­try’s as­sets.

Q: Is it like­ly the re­fin­ery could be up be­fore the first year of Petrotrin’s clo­sure?

A: We’re work­ing very hard to get the best val­ue for T&T.

Q: How much of the $1.4m worth of drugs at Petrotrin’s Au­gus­tus Long hos­pi­tal up to last De­cem­ber, re­mains in­tact and how much ex­pired?

A: The drugs were do­nat­ed to South West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty who’s al­ready tak­en pos­ses­sion.

Q: What’s oc­cur­ring with the rest of Petrotrin’s as­sets?

A: Non-core as­sets have been se­cured. There have been in­stances of pil­fer­age and ma­li­cious van­dal­ism. We’re do­ing every­thing prac­ti­cal to min­imise this. With po­lice and mil­i­tary sup­port we’re en­sur­ing per­sons en­gag­ing in these acts are dealt with ac­cord­ing to T&T’s laws. Gov­ern­ment is the ul­ti­mate own­er of as­sets and will make a fi­nal de­ter­mi­na­tion on what’s to be done with them.