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Wednesday, July 23, 2025

Minister mum on US Heritage Petroleum

by

Radhica De Silva
2474 days ago
20181014
Franklin Khan

Franklin Khan

RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Franklin Khan is re­main­ing mum on why the new­ly-formed state-owned Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed, one of two new en­ti­ties re­plac­ing Petrotrin, shares a sim­i­lar name as a pe­tro­le­um com­pa­ny op­er­at­ing in the Unit­ed States.

Checks by Guardian Me­dia re­vealed that Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um LLC (Lim­it­ed Li­a­bil­i­ty Com­pa­ny) op­er­ates as one of the largest in­de­pen­dent pe­tro­le­um dis­trib­u­tors in south­ern In­di­ana.

In­for­ma­tion from its web­site states that it of­fers a "range of ser­vices in­clud­ing fu­el man­age­ment and SMAR­Tank mon­i­tor­ing, Pa­cif­ic Pride com­mer­cial fu­elling, pipeline ser­vices, and emer­gency fu­el man­age­ment ser­vices".

It op­er­ates as a "full-ser­vice fu­el trans­porter and provider of fu­el prod­ucts, in­clud­ing pe­tro­le­um fu­els and al­ter­na­tive fu­els, oils, and lu­bri­cants. It al­so of­fers the Oil Analy­sis Pro­gram and has been in ex­is­tence for more than 50 years."

An email was sent to the Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um LLC ask­ing if there was any af­fil­i­a­tion with the new­ly-formed Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed in T&T. How­ev­er, no re­sponse was forth­com­ing.

Sev­er­al at­tempts were made to con­tact Khan on his cel­lu­lar phone yes­ter­day to get an­swers but the calls went unan­swered. A What­sapp mes­sage was sent to Khan ask­ing the lo­ca­tion and date of the launch of the two new com­pa­nies which will re­place Petrotrin, but Khan re­spond­ed, "My un­der­stand­ing is that there is no launch to­day."

The Sun­day Guardian then asked whether 3,500 ca­su­al work­ers will get re­trench­ment pack­ages or fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance to deal with the job loss­es, but Khan nev­er re­spond­ed to the What­sapp mes­sage al­though it was read. He al­so de­clined to say how many work­ers will be re­hired by the Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny Ltd and the Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny. The min­is­ter al­so de­clined to say whether it was co­in­ci­den­tal that the Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny had the same name as the US-based com­pa­ny.

'Shut­down sce­nario was un­prece­dent­ed'

Dur­ing an in­ter­view with CNC3's Morn­ing Brew on Fri­day, head of the Tran­si­tion Of­fice at Petrotrin Lisa Ali said the new com­pa­nies were sup­posed to be launched yes­ter­day. She al­so promised that all work­ers will be treat­ed in a fair and hu­mane man­ner. Asked to ex­plain, Ali said the ter­mi­na­tion process takes in­to ac­count four fac­tors.

"The first is that all em­ploy­ees must be treat­ed fair­ly, sec­ond­ly there is no com­pro­mise to Health, Safe­ty, and En­vi­ron­men­tal Stan­dards. Third­ly, we must en­sure con­ti­nu­ity of fu­el sup­plies and fi­nal­ly a safe and ef­fi­cient shut­down of the re­fin­ery," she re­vealed.

Say­ing the shut­down sce­nario was un­prece­dent­ed, Ali said Petrotrin must en­sure that all ter­mi­na­tion pack­ages are done in ac­cor­dance with the law and the col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing agree­ment.

"In struc­tur­ing the ter­mi­na­tion pack­ages, we took in­to con­sid­er­a­tion what is re­quired by law in the Re­trench­ment and Sev­er­ance Ben­e­fits Act and what is in the col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing process," Ali ex­plained.

She added that em­ploy­ees’ years of ser­vice bonus­es and Cost of Liv­ing Al­lowances are fac­tored in­to the sev­er­ance for­mu­la in each of the nine bar­gain­ing units be­fore ter­mi­na­tion pack­ages are is­sued.

"There is no op­tion whether you ac­cept or not," Ali said.

Asked what work­ers were most con­cerned about, Ali re­spond­ed, "The whole un­cer­tain­ty over the past two or three weeks has made em­ploy­ees con­cerned about how they will be treat­ed."

More than 1,000 em­ploy­ees re­ceived coun­selling

She said all ter­mi­na­tion let­ters will be is­sued by Oc­to­ber 15 giv­ing work­ers 45 days’ no­tice of ter­mi­na­tion.

This means their last day of work as a Petrotrin em­ploy­ee will be No­vem­ber 30.

She al­so not­ed that re­cruit­ment ad­ver­tise­ments will be is­sued from to­day (Sun­day) and will run from sev­en to 14 days.

She al­so said the start-up date for the new com­pa­nies will be De­cem­ber 1.

To help work­ers to cope, Ali said the Em­ploy­ee As­sis­tance Pro­gramme has been ramped up. She said more than 1,000 em­ploy­ees have re­ceived coun­selling over the past six weeks and fi­nan­cial man­age­ment ses­sions are be­ing held so work­ers will be able to ef­fi­cient­ly utilise their sev­er­ance monies.

"We have con­duct­ed 18 fi­nan­cial man­age­ment ses­sions at­tend­ed by over 400 em­ploy­ees," Ali said.

She not­ed that as the re­al­i­sa­tion of the end of Petrotrin dawns, more em­ploy­ees are step­ping for­ward to take ad­van­tage of the ses­sions, which will con­tin­ue over the next six months.

Ali not­ed that the $2 bil­lion sev­er­ance pay­ment ex­er­cise will be com­plet­ed by the end of No­vem­ber. She said while work­ers will un­der­go a pe­ri­od of grief, it was im­por­tant to ac­cept change and to pre­pare them­selves to ac­cept the new op­por­tu­ni­ties ahead.


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