kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt
While Minister of Energy and Energy Industries Stuart Young continued to defend the shutdown of Petrotrin, saying it spent US$650 million per year on crude oil imports for refining operations, the Paria Fuel Trading Co Ltd paid over US$3.5 billion to purchase fuel between 2018 and 2021.
Documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act (FoIA) by the Oilfields Workers’ Trade Union (OWTU) showed Paria spent an average of US$1.16 billion per annum on fuel imports.
Paria said it is engaged in purchasing refined products: gasoline, diesel, jet fuel and bunker fuel to supply to local and regional customers and its bunkering operations.
It is more than what Petrotrin spent on importing crude to produce products it sold on the local and international markets.
During a media conference at the OWTU Paramount Building headquarters in San Fernando yesterday, President General Ancel Roget said the union had to debunk the misinformation Young peddled to the nation.
Young spoke about the Petrotrin issue during a debate to adopt the report of the Standing Finance Committee in Parliament last Monday.
Roget said even Petrotrin’s predecessors, Texaco and Trintoc, imported crude because T&T did not have the variety needed for refining.
“They do not want you to make the connection with their bad energy policy, their bad economic policy. They do not want the citizens to make the connection that if Petrotrin was in operation today, we would not have had to carry the additional burden of paying more for fuel, gasoline, kerosene and super gasoline,” Roget said.
In 2018, Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley said instead of being a contributor, Petrotrin was a ward of the treasury.
However, information from the Ministry of Finance (MoF), through a FoIA request by the Fishermen and Friends of the Sea, shows that Petrotrin received no subventions between 2014 and 2017.
The only time the MoF forked out money was in 2019 when it spent $1.2 billion on closing/restructuring the company.
The Ministry of Energy and Energy Industries (MEEI) spent $169 million to service the interest on a $200 million loan facility interest for the late payment of a loan caused by the shutdown.
Although the Lashley Report indicated that Petrotrin was in severe debt, Roget said it never missed a loan payment. The company also had a bullet payment due August 19, which he said remained unpaid.
He said it was one of the reasons negotiations between the Government and Patriotic Energies and Technologies Co Ltd over the sale of the Pointe-a-Pierre Refinery broke down.
Roget said the Government does not want people to link the closure of Petrotrin to the hardships citizens face now. After coming out of the economic-restricting portion of the pandemic, where many people became unemployed, he said the Government unleashed higher fuel prices at the pumps and soon property tax.
He said citizens and small businesses also struggled to get foreign exchange.
The OWTU also accused Young of being disingenuous over his interview on CNN’s Quest on Business last week. Young said T&T was a significant natural gas and Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) producer for decades, pumping out about 770 million MMBtu of LNG annually during a production high.
With the war between Russia and Ukraine providing an opportunity, Young said the onus was on other oil and gas countries like T&T to ramp up production and provide an alternative to Russia during this crisis.
“We have four trains, and so we see the ability to have additional capacity right now,” said Young.
But Roget said Young was disingenuous as Atlantic’s Train One has been out of operation for a while, and the company will probably mothball the facility. Additionally, MEEI data shows natural gas, oil and LNG production has decreased annually since 2016.
“We are producing less gas and less oil as a result of less activity in that sector. Obviously. That fall or less or reduced activity is driven by government policy, or lack thereof or bad government policy. Because of bad government policy, you have a direct correlation with natural gas production, and, of course, a decline in crude oil production. That is the Ministry’s figures.”
Young also said the Government would use most of the increased revenue from surging energy prices to pay outstanding bills. Roget said its most critical bill is the one owed to workers. He said while many suffered from the closure of Petrotrin, contractors benefited, as Paria revealed that it paid Kenson Operational Services Ltd, founded by former San Fernando Mayor Kenneth Ferguson, almost $127 million for technical and human resources services.
Trinity Liftboat Services Ltd collected an estimated $162 million.