Guyana’s Min­is­ter of Nat­ur­al Re­sources, Vick­ram Bhar­rat, says while the coun­try has not closed the door on part­ner­ing with T&T to re­open the Petrotrin Re­fin­ery in Pointe-a-Pierre, there are fac­tors they will have to con­sid­er be­fore mak­ing a de­ci­sion.

How­ev­er, he said no dis­cus­sion will take place un­til af­ter Guyana’s gen­er­al elec­tion, which is sched­uled for Sep­tem­ber 1. He was speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia at the Glob­al Bio­di­ver­si­ty Al­liance Sum­mit yes­ter­day in George­town, Guyana.

The Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar-led ad­min­is­tra­tion an­nounced in June that it is set­ting up a re­fin­ery com­mit­tee to ex­plore the fea­si­bil­i­ty of re­open­ing the Petrotrin Re­fin­ery.

The com­mit­tee is be­ing chaired by for­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine, who told Guardian Me­dia he ex­pects to have a re­port com­plet­ed in four months.

When asked if Guyana will re­con­sid­er its po­si­tion on the re­fin­ery in light of the es­tab­lish­ment of a com­mit­tee, Bhar­rat said yes­ter­day, “I can say solid­ly we have not tak­en a de­ci­sion with re­gards to how we will col­lab­o­rate with T&T with re­gards to re­open­ing the re­fin­ery but I’m sure that’s on the cards when we meet af­ter the elec­tion.”

Bhar­rat con­firmed he re­ceived a let­ter from En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal. How­ev­er, he would on­ly say the let­ter sought to ini­ti­ate dis­cus­sions. He said he told Mooni­lal the dis­cus­sions will have to take place af­ter the elec­tion.

Pressed on whether the Guyanese gov­ern­ment will con­sid­er hav­ing dis­cus­sions with T&T sur­round­ing the re­fin­ery, Bhar­rat said, “I don’t think I’ll be able to give you a di­rect an­swer to that be­cause I’ve not seen any as­sess­ment, whether tech­ni­cal as­sess­ment or fi­nan­cial as­sess­ment, of that re­fin­ery with re­gards to restart­ing it. Of course, we will need that. Oth­er­wise, I’ll be just pluck­ing a fig­ure or giv­ing you my per­son­al thought, and that would not go down well with ei­ther side. So, I don’t want to com­mit with­out ac­tu­al­ly see­ing what ex­ists and what needs to be done in or­der to put that re­fin­ery back in­to op­er­a­tion.”

He went fur­ther in say­ing Guyana will have to look at the fi­nan­cial costs of restart­ing the re­fin­ery.

Bhar­rat added, “We al­so have to look at the op­er­a­tional cost and al­so the ca­pac­i­ty of it in to­day’s world too. That’s the vi­sion. The tech­nol­o­gy be­ing used. These are all things that have to be con­sid­ered be­fore we can make a more in­formed state­ment or de­ci­sion with re­gards to.”

When asked whether he was sur­prised US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump re­voked T&T’s Of­fice of For­eign As­sets Con­trol (OFAC) li­cence, es­sen­tial­ly end­ing the Drag­on Gas deal be­tween T&T and Venezuela, Bhar­rat would on­ly say the deal nev­er caused fric­tion in the re­la­tion­ship be­tween this coun­try and Guyana.

“Trinidad has al­ways sup­port­ed Guyana and, be­ing part of Cari­com, has sup­port­ed Guyana against the claims be­ing made by Venezuela. So I don’t think it brought about any kind of an­i­mos­i­ty be­tween Guyana and Trinidad.”

Bhar­rat says there are scores of T&T cit­i­zens liv­ing and work­ing in Guyana, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the oil and gas sec­tor.

He says un­der the Treaty of Ch­aguara­mas, cit­i­zens of his coun­try have been able to eas­i­ly ac­cess jobs with­in the en­er­gy sec­tor in that coun­try.