Although Guyana is scheduled to start construction of its own refinery this year, its Natural Resources Minister Vickram Bharrat says they are not "completely closing the door" on a possible collaboration with T&T about refining crude oil in this country.
"We would have issued a Request for Proposal for a design, finance build model for a 30,000 barrel refinery in Guyana that would have been closed in December, we have nine submissions to date so we are in the process of now evaluating those nine proposals to move to a final selection for one company," Bharrat told Guardian Media during an interview at the International Energy conference being held at the Guyana Marriott hotel in Georgetown.
The proposed site for the refinery is 30 acres of land located at the mouth of the Berbice River in the vicinity of an area known as “Crab Island.”
Construction of the refinery is expected to start before June and completed within two years.
The company that wins the contract for the refinery's construction will get a ten-year tax holiday.
The project will be strictly financed and owned 100 per cent by the private sector, and Guyana's government will not have any ownership or investment interest in the project.
"But in mentioning that I am not saying that the door is closed to talks with Trinidad in the future so I don't want to completely close the door and say that we are not interested at all in collaborating with Trinidad in any way or the other with regards to refining our crude there," Bharrat said.
Bharrat said this is all part of Guyana's plan in becoming self-sufficient in terms of energy.
"We need to ensure we have some form of energy security locally and that is why we are moving ahead with the request for proposals for the refinery and we have those nine submissions that we are evaluating," he said.
Last year T&T and Guyana signed a Memorandum of Understanding to cooperate in several areas including pursuing enhanced cooperation in energy.
As such Bharrat said a working group will be established.
"What we will do and what is a requirement or a part of the MOU is for us to set up a working group which we had before so we are working toward re-establishing the working group as part of the MOU," he said.
Bharrat said the relationship between the two countries is strong.
"I must say with Prime Minister Rowley's presence in Guyana at the energy conference here and with Minister's Young presence here it sends a clear message that Guyana and T&T are working together and there is a lot quite honestly that we can learn from T&T because Trinidad has been in this sector for decades now, we are new in it we are now producing so there is a lot that we can learn from each other as well too," he said.
"And our heads of government have a good working relationship which we are building on so I would say there are a number of areas that we can collaborate and cooperate on and we have seen a strengthening of our relationship, especially in the energy sector of recent," Bharrat said.
Speaking at the energy conference yesterday Guyana's Finance Minister Dr Ashni Singh said while the energy sector has helped the country's economy triple in size in the last three years, they are also ensuring that the non-energy sectors are also developed.
"The world is not short of examples of jurisdictions that have fallen into the well-known circumstances of over-dependence on a particular economic sector and so we place the highest level of importance on ensuring that we achieve strong non-oil economic growth and that we do the things necessary today to continue to have strong non-oil economic growth going forward," Singh said.
Singh said Guyana is making moves to ensure it will never go back to its previous economic position.