DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal has ex­pressed sat­is­fac­tion with the progress of the Kevin Ram­nar­ine-led en­er­gy restart com­mit­tee, not­ing that it re­mains on track to sub­mit its re­port by No­vem­ber.

Ap­point­ed in Ju­ly, the 12-mem­ber com­mit­tee, in­clud­ing for­mer Petrotrin man­agers and Oil­field Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU) of­fi­cials, was giv­en four months to de­vel­op a strat­e­gy for the re­fin­ery’s re­ac­ti­va­tion and sub­mit its re­port.

Asked if he had re­ceived up­dates and was con­tent with the com­mit­tee’s work, Dr Mooni­lal said, “Yes, I have re­ceived reg­u­lar up­dates. The team have con­duct­ed sev­er­al lengthy ses­sions analysing da­ta and el­e­ments of the moth­balling records.”

He added that the com­mit­tee’s work had been pro­gress­ing steadi­ly, ex­press­ing con­fi­dence that it re­mained on track to sub­mit its pre­lim­i­nary re­port on sched­ule.

How­ev­er, for­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan em­pha­sised that any restart must be guid­ed by a coun­try’s im­pact as­sess­ment, rather than sim­ply prof­it-and-loss pro­jec­tions. She ar­gued that re­open­ing the re­fin­ery should pri­ori­tise en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty, for­eign ex­change earn­ings, and job cre­ation while ad­dress­ing in­ef­fi­cien­cies high­light­ed in past au­dits, such as Shell’s re­view.

Seep­er­sad-Bachan al­so stressed the im­por­tance of an in­ter­na­tion­al eq­ui­ty part­ner, not on­ly for cap­i­tal but al­so for tech­nol­o­gy, mar­ket ac­cess for re­fined prod­ucts, and a re­li­able crude sup­ply. She de­scribed the re­cent vis­it of In­di­an Prime Min­is­ter Naren­dra Mo­di as a missed op­por­tu­ni­ty, cit­ing pre­vi­ous MOUs with the In­di­an Oil Cor­po­ra­tion un­der the Bas­deo Pan­day ad­min­is­tra­tion.

“I thought that prob­a­bly one of the gov­ern­ment-to-gov­ern­ment agree­ments could have been the open­ing of the re­fin­ery. As we all know, In­dia is very big in re­fin­ing. They are one of the biggest re­fin­ers in the world, and their re­fined prod­ucts are sold glob­al­ly. And they don’t have any eq­ui­ty crude; they source crude from oth­er coun­tries such as Rus­sia, et cetera,” she said.

On re­gion­al geopol­i­tics, Seep­er­sad-Bachan warned that US-Venezuela and Venezuela-Guyana ten­sions height­en the im­por­tance of en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty for Trinidad and To­ba­go. While she ac­knowl­edged the Gov­ern­ment’s need to sup­port an­ti-drug ef­forts, she urged that rhetoric against Venezuela be tem­pered. How­ev­er, she stressed the im­por­tance of di­ver­si­fy­ing crude sources with­out plac­ing all hope in Venezuela.

“We should not be in any way over-re­liant on any one coun­try for this source of crude,” she said. She al­so rec­om­mend­ed in­vest­ment in an in­de­pen­dent third-par­ty in­spec­tion firm to en­sure as­set in­tegri­ty, cit­ing risks from cor­ro­sion and de­grad­ed equip­ment af­ter years of in­ac­tiv­i­ty.

Mean­while, econ­o­mist and for­mer min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance Mar­i­ano Browne said glob­al en­er­gy dy­nam­ics, rather than re­gion­al pol­i­tics, would ul­ti­mate­ly de­ter­mine the fu­ture of T&T’s re­fin­ery.

He point­ed out that de­spite geopo­lit­i­cal ten­sions in the Caribbean and the Mid­dle East, oil prices have been fluc­tu­at­ing around US$60 a bar­rel, sug­gest­ing wider forces, in­clud­ing com­pe­ti­tion be­tween Sau­di Ara­bia, Rus­sia, and US shale pro­duc­ers, are at play.

Browne not­ed that Sau­di Ara­bia, with its low pro­duc­tion costs, had been will­ing to ab­sorb short-term loss­es to un­der­cut the US, which has pres­sured prices. He ar­gued that such glob­al pres­sures will weigh more heav­i­ly on the vi­a­bil­i­ty of restart­ing the Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery than US–Venezuela ten­sions.

On the re­fin­ery it­self, the for­mer min­is­ter agreed with Seep­er­sad-Bachan that years of in­ac­tiv­i­ty have in­creased re­fur­bish­ment costs. He ex­plained that a re­fin­ery is not one plant but a net­work of more than 20 in­te­grat­ed units, all of which must be re­stored to func­tion seam­less­ly. He said the longer it takes, the more cost­ly it is to re­fur­bish, adding that most in­vestors will seek the re­fin­ery “for free” giv­en the bil­lions re­quired to up­grade it.

“Where are those re­sources go­ing to come from? Many of the peo­ple who were in­volved in the en­er­gy sec­tor in Petrotrin have left. You have to bring them back, and they left, and they’re work­ing for big mon­ey else­where in the world.

“So, the cost of re­fur­bish­ing it is not mere­ly the cost of the in­vest­ment in the ac­tu­al phys­i­cal plans and every­thing that has to hap­pen along those lines. It’s the HR, hu­man re­source el­e­ments. That’s one of the dif­fi­cul­ties that we have in clos­ing it.”

Browne al­so un­der­lined that to be vi­able, the re­fin­ery must op­er­ate at ef­fi­cien­cy lev­els com­pa­ra­ble to glob­al com­peti­tors, which is around 95 per cent. He added that the Gov­ern­ment’s role should be to clar­i­fy whether re­fur­bish­ment or leas­ing is fea­si­ble but stressed that glob­al sup­ply-and-de­mand trends will ul­ti­mate­ly shape the de­ci­sion.

Ef­forts to con­tact OW­TU of­fi­cials An­cel Ro­get and Ozzi War­wick were un­suc­cess­ful.