Oan­do PLC has been cho­sen as the pre­ferred bid­der for the lease of the Guaracara re­fin­ery.

Act­ing Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young, (al­so Min­is­ter of En­er­gy) said the de­ci­sion was large­ly based on Oan­do’s strong fi­nan­cial track record, par­tic­u­lar­ly its $1.5 bil­lion ac­qui­si­tion of Cono­coPhillips’ as­sets in Nige­ria.

The eval­u­a­tion com­mit­tee not­ed that both Oan­do and the CRO Con­sor­tium had sim­i­lar ca­pa­bil­i­ties in op­er­at­ing re­finer­ies, but Oan­do’s abil­i­ty to se­cure sub­stan­tial fi­nanc­ing in the up­stream oil sec­tor gave it an ad­van­tage.

Young al­so made it clear that pro­tect­ing Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny’s as­sets was cru­cial to en­sur­ing the con­tin­ued sup­ply of do­mes­tic fu­el.

“We have to pro­tect the as­sets of Paria to al­ways en­sure that we can pro­vide do­mes­tic fu­el to our pop­u­la­tion,” Young said. He stressed that any po­ten­tial bid­der must show a com­mit­ment to restart­ing the re­fin­ery and not just ac­quir­ing Paria’s as­sets for bunker­ing pur­pos­es.

Young al­so said that Oan­do’s pro­pos­al aligned with the gov­ern­ment’s goals of re­duc­ing the state’s bur­den and cre­at­ing flex­i­bil­i­ty for the fu­ture op­er­a­tion of the re­fin­ery, en­sur­ing its restart would be pri­ori­tised.