No­ti­fi­ca­tion let­ters and ex­it pack­ages now be­ing pre­pared for Petrotrin work­ers are ex­pect­ed to be dis­trib­uted af­ter talks be­tween the com­pa­ny and union on this, but Petrotrin’s med­ical plan for 21,000 peo­ple will con­tin­ue un­til year-end while ex­perts work out how to sus­tain it be­yond that.

These pro­jec­tions are made in doc­u­ments from a Petrotrin man­age­ment meet­ing, in­clud­ing ad­vis­ers, last Thurs­day. The doc­u­ments, copies of which the Sun­day Guardian ob­tained, al­so stat­ed there’s no at­tempt to sell Petrotrin’s re­fin­ery and no of­fers are com­ing, but there are of­fers/in­ter­est in the up­stream busi­ness. The doc­u­ments al­so de­tailed de­liv­er­ables to be met dur­ing clo­sure/tran­si­tion.

Last Thurs­day’s man­age­ment meet­ing con­cerned Gov­ern­ment plans to tem­porar­i­ly shut down the com­pa­ny while its re­fin­ery tran­si­tions in­to per­ma­nent clo­sure. This af­fects 4,800 work­ers, par­tic­u­lar­ly the 1,700 re­fin­ery work­ers. Petrotrin’s board met with the Oil­field Work­ers’ Trade Union on Thurs­day al­so. Both par­ties are ex­pect­ed to meet again to­mor­row when the union hopes to con­tin­ue fo­cus on its pro­pos­al for a lease to save the re­fin­ery.

How­ev­er, Petrotrin of­fi­cials said yes­ter­day that prepa­ra­tions are still mov­ing ahead on no­ti­fi­ca­tion let­ters and ex­it pack­ages for work­ers, “which the com­pa­ny will want to dis­cuss with OW­TU be­fore they’re all fi­nalised.”

Af­ter Mon­day’s talks with the board, the OW­TU an­nounced a protest march from Wednes­day to Fri­day from South to North.

Doc­u­ments from Thurs­day’s man­age­ment meet­ing on the over­all plan stat­ed there will be “phased wind­ing down” for the re­fin­ery, with ac­com­pa­ny­ing in­crease in fu­el im­por­ta­tion. Phased ex­it will be based on re­sources as need­ed to man­age the process safe­ly/smooth­ly. This was pro­ject­ed at about “four months at the ex­treme end.”

For Ex­plo­ration/Pro­duc­tion, there will be sim­i­lar phased tran­si­tion. Doc­u­ments pro­ject­ed that fur­ther com­mu­ni­ca­tion on the sit­u­a­tion will fol­low next week. It was al­so pro­ject­ed “Ex­it pack­ages” will fol­low.

It was stat­ed the pen­sion/ex­it en­ti­tle­ments have been worked out. Of­fi­cials said this will be dis­cussed with the union. The plan pro­ject­ed that let­ters to work­ers will be dis­trib­uted once union talks on the is­sue are com­plet­ed.

Work­ers’ let­ters are planned to in­clude cal­cu­la­tion of ex­it pack­ages. Let­ters are ex­pect­ed to be dis­trib­uted in batch­es. The sched­ule for dis­tri­b­u­tion “could” be out next week, the notes pro­ject­ed.

The meet­ing’s doc­u­ments al­so stat­ed, “Med­ical will re­main un­changed till the end of the year. The ex­ist­ing ap­proach will be main­tained for the rest of the year. The best op­tions are be­ing looked at, re, how to sus­tain it af­ter that. Ex­perts are work­ing on that right now. Ba­si­cal­ly, they are look­ing for a sus­tain­able way to meet the com­mit­ment to 21,000 peo­ple in the med­ical plan.”

Doc­u­ments stat­ed the new or­gan­i­sa­tion is “com­plete­ly re­designed” and em­ploy­ees will have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to ap­ply for jobs in this. It’s planned an “in­de­pen­dent ser­vice provider” will be post­ing and ad­ver­tis­ing jobs for the new or­gan­i­sa­tion.

All work­ers will be in­vit­ed to ap­ply. Peo­ple would not have to wait for their ex­it let­ter to ap­ply, it’s pro­posed.

“Jobs will be post­ed and every­one is in­vit­ed to ap­ply,” doc­u­ments added.

De­tails on that as­pect were pro­ject­ed to be giv­en with­in the next few weeks and can­di­dates will be se­lect­ed based on whether they meet re­quire­ments and suc­cess­ful com­ple­tion of as­sess­ment pro­ce­dures.

Doc­u­ments stat­ed staff will be need­ed in In­for­ma­tion Tech­nol­o­gy and Fi­nance. Peo­ple whose ser­vices will be re­quired will be no­ti­fied in com­ing weeks, it’s planned.

$25b debt for new com­pa­ny?

The doc­u­ments al­so stat­ed, “Up­stream con­tin­ues to be a di­a­mond in the rough. Al­though it has lots of hid­den prob­lems, it al­so has a lot of po­ten­tial. The dif­fi­cul­ty was al­ways how to make the re­fin­ery work. A deep­er look was tak­en and the re­sults didn’t im­prove.

“It made more sense to put cap­i­tal in­to Up­stream, which has been starved for years. If used wise­ly, there will be re­turns. World-class con­sul­tants were used to vet the de­ci­sions made. We will be sad­dling the new busi­ness with debt. Up­stream is vi­able but more is be­ing asked of it. It will be start­ing out with a $25 bil­lion debt.”

Doc­u­ments added, “A head has been hired for the Up­stream busi­ness. A cou­ple peo­ple have been se­lect­ed for the tran­si­tion team. They are very se­nior peo­ple in the or­gan­i­sa­tion.

“Two new en­ti­ties are be­ing formed be­cause of fi­nan­cial arrange­ments. This in­cludes a “Lega­cy” en­ti­ty for clean­ing up, dis­man­tling etc.”

At least one se­nior of­fi­cial at the meet­ing said Petrotrin was “as close to the brink” as they’d ever seen it in meet­ing its com­mit­ments.

The path for Petrotrin’s tran­si­tion from clo­sure to new or­gan­i­sa­tion, as well as plans to as­sist com­mu­ni­ties in neigh­bour­ing San Fer­nan­do and en­vi­rons and as­sist work­ers, is ex­pect­ed to be a core as­pect of Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert’s 2019 Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion to­mor­row.

The Petrotrin sit­u­a­tion al­so com­pris­es a sig­nif­i­cant part of Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s Bud­get re­ply next week Fri­day.