KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Re­open­ing the for­mer Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery will on­ly suc­ceed if the Gov­ern­ment se­cures a part­ner with sub­stan­tial fi­nan­cial re­sources and guar­an­teed ac­cess to crude oil, econ­o­mist Dr Ronald Ramkissoon has cau­tioned, fol­low­ing Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s an­nounce­ment that the Unit­ed States will as­sist in iden­ti­fy­ing a suit­able in­vestor.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said restart­ing the re­fin­ery was a key fo­cus of her re­cent bi­lat­er­al talks with US Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio, as Trinidad and To­ba­go seeks to deep­en co­op­er­a­tion with Wash­ing­ton on en­er­gy and se­cu­ri­ty. She dis­closed that Ru­bio agreed to con­nect the Gov­ern­ment with the US De­part­ment of En­er­gy to help iden­ti­fy “the best part­ner” to re­open the fa­cil­i­ty.

The Prime Min­is­ter added that sev­er­al en­ti­ties have al­ready ex­pressed in­ter­est. En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal has met with one prospec­tive part­ner, while she held dis­cus­sions with an­oth­er dur­ing her re­cent vis­it to St Kitts. Fur­ther talks ar e ex­pect­ed, in­clud­ing with the African Ex­port-Im­port Bank.

Ramkissoon said any po­ten­tial part­ner must sat­is­fy two crit­i­cal re­quire­ments: fi­nan­cial ca­pac­i­ty and a re­li­able crude sup­ply. He warned that restart­ing the moth­balled re­fin­ery could cost bil­lions of dol­lars and would re­quire con­sis­tent ac­cess to suit­able crude oil to en­sure com­mer­cial vi­a­bil­i­ty.

“Based on every­thing I hear and read, the ‘best part­ner’ must have very deep pock­ets, and it must al­so have ac­cess to crude oil to feed the re­fin­ery,” Ramkissoon said. “If a part­ner can sat­is­fy those two ma­jor fac­tors, that would be pos­i­tive for Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

He not­ed that the re­fin­ery’s clo­sure in 2018 was not uni­ver­sal­ly sup­port­ed by tech­ni­cal analy­ses, and de­bate has con­tin­ued over whether al­ter­na­tive op­tions ex­ist­ed. How­ev­er, he stressed that any re­open­ing would be dri­ven by com­mer­cial re­al­i­ties rather than sen­ti­ment.

“They will not in­vest un­less they can see a rate of re­turn com­pa­ra­ble to oth­er op­por­tu­ni­ties else­where,” he said.

Ramkissoon re­called that un­der the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion, a Nige­ria-based com­pa­ny had ex­pressed in­ter­est in the re­fin­ery, but no agree­ment was fi­nalised.

“This process of search­ing for a part­ner has been go­ing on for quite a while,” he said, adding that high costs and un­cer­tain­ty over crude sup­ply have re­mained ma­jor ob­sta­cles.

He al­so placed the re­fin­ery’s prospects with­in the con­text of a volatile glob­al en­er­gy mar­ket. Since 2018, re­fin­ing mar­gins have fluc­tu­at­ed sig­nif­i­cant­ly. De­mand growth be­tween 2018 and 2019 was fol­lowed by a sharp de­cline dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, when many re­finer­ies world­wide op­er­at­ed at re­duced ca­pac­i­ty or loss­es. Be­tween 2021 and 2025, mar­gins re­cov­ered un­even­ly amid shift­ing de­mand, ex­pand­ing glob­al re­fin­ing ca­pac­i­ty and geopo­lit­i­cal ten­sions.

At the same time, the glob­al shift to­ward re­new­able en­er­gy and de­car­bon­i­sa­tion has made re­fin­ing less at­trac­tive to some in­vestors, while Trinidad and To­ba­go’s en­er­gy strat­e­gy has in­creas­ing­ly fo­cused on nat­ur­al gas and petro­chem­i­cals.

“All of these fac­tors must be ex­am­ined,” Ramkissoon said, adding that he ex­pects the Re­fin­ery Re­view Com­mit­tee, chaired by for­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine, would have as­sessed these is­sues.

“I am sure that if some­one is go­ing to in­vest in the re­fin­ery, they would con­duct that lev­el of as­sess­ment. Be­cause it is cost­ly and there are many un­knowns, it has been very dif­fi­cult to find an in­ter­est­ed in­vestor,” he said.

While he could not say whether Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s an­nounce­ment sig­nals im­mi­nent progress, Ramkissoon said se­cur­ing a part­ner ca­pa­ble of over­com­ing these fi­nan­cial and sup­ply chal­lenges would be a pos­i­tive de­vel­op­ment for the coun­try.

OW­TU backs re­fin­ery restart

Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU) pres­i­dent gen­er­al An­cel Ro­get has ex­pressed full sup­port for Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s ef­forts to restart the Pointe-a-Pierre (PAP) re­fin­ery, de­scrib­ing the ini­tia­tive as crit­i­cal to na­tion­al re­cov­ery.

In a state­ment, Ro­get said the OW­TU was “ex­treme­ly pleased and to­tal­ly sup­port­ive” of the Prime Min­is­ter’s con­tin­ued com­mit­ment to se­cur­ing the re­fin­ery’s restart. He al­so com­mend­ed En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, say­ing both lead­ers had made “enor­mous progress” and that their ef­forts were “phe­nom­e­nal and his­toric”.

Ro­get said the union’s po­si­tion was ful­ly aligned with that of the Prime Min­is­ter, stress­ing that the restart of the re­fin­ery would gen­er­ate much-need­ed for­eign ex­change and bring sig­nif­i­cant re­lief to the pop­u­la­tion.

He blamed the for­mer PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion for the clo­sure of the re­fin­ery, ar­gu­ing that the de­ci­sion was large­ly re­spon­si­ble for the for­eign ex­change cri­sis and had caused “enor­mous pain and suf­fer­ing” to the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Ro­get al­so crit­i­cised the pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment for aban­don­ing what he de­scribed as an op­por­tu­ni­ty to recog­nise the African Ex­port-Im­port Bank in Trinidad and To­ba­go. He said the OW­TU had con­tin­ued to ad­vo­cate for the bank’s recog­ni­tion in the re­gion and par­tic­u­lar­ly in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The union leader said the OW­TU re­mained ready, with its tech­ni­cal and op­er­a­tional work­force, to sup­port the Gov­ern­ment’s ef­forts to restart the re­fin­ery.

As a coali­tion part­ner, Ro­get said the OW­TU was sat­is­fied with the foun­da­tion­al steps tak­en by the Gov­ern­ment to restart the PAP re­fin­ery and es­tab­lish Trinidad and To­ba­go as the en­er­gy cap­i­tal of the re­gion. He added that the union had been work­ing close­ly with the Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and the Gov­ern­ment and said a col­lab­o­ra­tive ap­proach would en­sure a safe, se­cure, suc­cess­ful and sus­tain­able restart of the re­fin­ery.