Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

The restart of the Guaracara re­fin­ery is be­ing ham­pered, hin­dered and im­paired by some of the pro­cure­ment reg­u­la­tions, and the Gov­ern­ment will have no part of it, ac­cord­ing to En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal.

“Enough is enough! ... We won’t be able to at­tract in­vestors if we stay too long to restart the re­fin­ery,” Mooni­lal de­clared dur­ing yes­ter­day’s Low­er House de­bate on the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty (Amend­ment) Bill, 2026.

Mooni­lal said, “The ob­jec­tive with this bill is to free the eco­nom­ic and in­dus­tri­al sys­tems so the small and mi­cro con­trac­tor could par­tic­i­pate. We have been pre­oc­cu­pied 24 hours a day with this mat­ter of the re­fin­ery restart. The biggest is­sue that con­strains us and makes us move in a very slow man­ner is the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion (OPR).”

“We could have restart­ed the re­fin­ery al­ready, 5,000 peo­ple could have had jobs now while I’m speak­ing. But every time we move (in a crick­et anal­o­gy), this OPR is re­al­ly an ad­min­is­tra­tive ‘Duck­worth Lewis’ sys­tem. Every time you make a move they say, ‘check again the sci­en­tif­ic for­mu­la,’” he said.

He said if the min­istry made a move on the re­fin­ery, it was told there was an OPR reg­u­la­tion.

“If we make a move again on the re­fin­ery to do some­thing, it’s ‘Hold on, you can’t go there.’ Every day I ask a com­mit­tee what is the up­date on this re­fin­ery.

“My Prime Min­is­ter is ask­ing me, ‘Min­is­ter of En­er­gy, what is hap­pen­ing? When are we restart­ing the re­fin­ery?’ I say, ‘Prime Min­is­ter, lis­ten, I’d like to restart that re­fin­ery tonight and (light) the ‘flare’ up’, but there is an OPR process and they tell me they have to sat­is­fy this reg­u­la­tion, that reg­u­la­tion and they have to do this and that, and is­sue this and that, and look at the Reg­istry here and here,” he said.

Mooni­lal added, “And I say, ‘when will we restart the re­fin­ery?’ When every­thing is cor­rod­ed and rusty? When are you go­ing to restart the re­fin­ery? When you plug it on and blow up Mara­bel­la?!”

He al­so not­ed that un­der the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment, the OPR wrote the re­fin­ery’s hold­ing com­pa­ny, TPHL, say­ing the process it was us­ing to lease or sell the re­fin­ery had “ob­scure over­sight” and “in­for­ma­tion gaps.”

Mooni­lal al­so re­lat­ed prob­lems small con­trac­tors have meet­ing OPR re­quire­ments.

He added, “This bill is in the in­ter­est of restart­ing the re­fin­ery.Small con­trac­tors who can­not go through this so­phis­ti­cat­ed process and lengthy time­lines and de­lay and get frus­trat­ed.”

“But large-scale con­trac­tors want the sta­tus quo to con­tin­ue—we dis­cov­ered that a large-scale con­trac­tor who re­ceived con­tracts for $200 mil­lion-plus was al­so cut­ting grass for $50,000,” he said.

Mooni­lal cit­ed sub­mis­sions from Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um, Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny, Land Set­tle­ments Agency, Na­tion­al Lot­ter­ies Board and oth­ers sup­port­ing the bill.

He de­fend­ed the bill’s clause al­low­ing the OPR to or­der costs to be paid to a procur­ing en­ti­ty when a chal­lenge to the en­ti­ty’s mat­ter is lost.

“Hun­dreds of thou­sands of tax­pay­ers’ dol­lars are paid by the State sec­tor, re­spond­ing to chal­lenges re­gard­ing the OPR and some things are friv­o­lous... so if you lose the chal­lenge, you pay,” Mooni­lal told the House.

He said the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion’s $3.4 bil­lion hous­ing project, which the OPR had halt­ed, did not in­volve tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey but was pri­vate-sec­tor-dri­ven.