En­er­gy Min­is­ter Franklin Khan yes­ter­day re­mained tight-lipped as to where the OW­TU will get its fund­ing to pur­chase Petrotrin’s re­fin­ery.

Khan spoke about the good news of OW­TU buy­ing the re­fin­ery, stat­ing that he was pleased with the union’s of­fer.

“It was pro­fes­sion­al­ly put to­geth­er. It was well re­searched and well struc­tured.”

Dur­ing the eval­u­a­tion stages, Khan said there was a lot of talk as to who would get it (re­fin­ery).

“But the OW­TU kept their cool....they kept their si­lence be­cause they had signed a non-dis­clo­sure agree­ment and they ho­n­oured it re­li­gious­ly.”

Khan thanked the OW­TU for their be­hav­iour, stat­ing that he would work close­ly with them to start up the re­fin­ery “hope­ful­ly by 2020.”

He al­so praised Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley for es­tab­lish­ing the com­mit­tee which the Gov­ern­ment was heav­i­ly crit­i­cised for, as many felt there was “po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence.”

He said the PM had in­di­cat­ed that if the OW­TU want­ed the re­fin­ery they must make a bid that could “stand scruti­ny and be eco­nom­i­cal­ly ro­bust.”

In­sist­ing that the eval­u­a­tion process had been “trans­par­ent,” Khan said the “proof of the pud­ding is now in the eat­ing”.

He said OW­TU will have full con­trol and man­age­ment of the re­fin­ery.

“They have pro­posed a sale of the re­fin­ery. So once that pur­chase agree­ment comes in­to place, bar cer­tain spe­cif­ic parts of the claus­es in terms of the con­ces­sions that Mr Im­bert an­nounced the re­fin­ery will be­long to them.”

Khan said PET­CL will sign an MOU, with Trafigu­ra PTE Ltd, the sec­ond-largest in­ter­na­tion­al oil trad­er.

“I think they have hooked their wag­on to some­thing very good.”

Ques­tioned by Guardian Me­dia where the fund­ing for the sale of the re­fin­ery will come from, Khan ad­vised that we di­rect this ques­tion to the OW­TU.

“They have put a plan for­ward. I don’t want to dis­close that.”

Should the OW­TU run in­to fi­nan­cial prob­lems, Khan said “we will cross that bridge when we come to. But those are ques­tions that are bet­ter put to Pa­tri­ot­ic.”

Told that some peo­ple may see the move as an elec­tion strat­e­gy to win back the votes of the dis­grun­tled trade union move­ment, Khan said the Gov­ern­ment went through due process.

“There is ab­solute­ly no ques­tion that they had the best bid. They were the on­ly peo­ple who had an up­front con­sid­er­a­tion of a whop­ping US$700 mil­lion.”

Khan said the Gov­ern­ment and OW­TU are now part­ners in this ex­er­cise.

“The OW­TU has now got­ten a very strate­gic na­tion­al as­set which we hope they can bring in­to op­er­a­tion in the short­est pos­si­ble time.”

Once the re­fin­ery is back in op­er­a­tion, Khan said he hoped that the Mara­bel­la, Gas­par­il­lo, Point-a-Pierre and sur­round­ing ar­eas can re-gen­er­ate eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty.

The re­fin­ery has a ca­pac­i­ty of re­fin­ing 140,000 bar­rels of oil dai­ly.

Told that the OW­TU has been very crit­i­cal of the Gov­ern­ment, Khan said Pa­tri­otric was a pri­vate com­pa­ny and was not nec­es­sar­i­ly the OW­TU.

“Ob­vi­ous­ly, the com­pa­ny will have its fi­nanciers, in­vestors and in­vest­ment bank. Why should we stay away from us­ing Pa­tri­ot­ic and the OW­TU in­ter­change­ably?” he asked.