KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Draw­ing on Di­vali’s mes­sage of light over­com­ing dark­ness, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal said it was on­ly a mat­ter of time be­fore a “very large deya” was lit at the Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery, adding that the Gov­ern­ment was fol­low­ing a path no court chal­lenge could de­rail.

Mooni­lal, al­so the Oropouche East MP, made the re­marks on Tues­day evening at the Oropouche East Sports and Cul­tur­al Com­mit­tee’s Di­vali Oor­ja at Debe Junc­tion.

The deya, in this case, sym­bol­is­es the re­fin­ery’s re­open­ing. Mooni­lal said the restart was in its fi­nal stage and that the Gov­ern­ment was fol­low­ing the law to pre­vent lit­i­ga­tion that would stop the re­open­ing.

“We are fol­low­ing a process that, yes, takes a lit­tle time, but we are sure that with that process, it is un­chal­lenge­able, unim­peach­able, and we will get through with the Guaracara Re­fin­ery.”

Mooni­lal did not say when the re­fin­ery would restart or who would op­er­ate it. He thanked the restart com­mit­tee, in­clud­ing Pe­nal-Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion chair­man Gau­tam Ma­haraj, for its work.

Look­ing ahead to next year, Mooni­lal said it would be chal­leng­ing but suc­cess­ful.

“The light of oil and gas will al­so shine.”

The re­fin­ery, for­mer­ly op­er­at­ed by Petrotrin, was shut down on No­vem­ber 30, 2018, by the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment ad­min­is­tra­tion amid bil­lions of dol­lars in debt and op­er­a­tional loss­es. The Per­sad-Bisses­sar Gov­ern­ment made its restart a cam­paign promise.

In Oc­to­ber, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo said the Gov­ern­ment was as­sess­ing pro­pos­als from a short­list of lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al in­vestors as it ad­vanced plans for a phased restart. For­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Stu­art Young has long de­scribed the Gov­ern­ment’s plans to restart the re­fin­ery as “smoke and mir­rors.”

Ear­li­er in his ad­dress, Mooni­lal spoke about Di­vali, which he de­scribed as the Hin­du fes­ti­val cel­e­brat­ing the vic­to­ry of light over dark­ness and good over evil, root­ed in the re­turn of Lord Ra­ma to Ay­o­d­hya. It falls on the dark­est night of the Hin­du cal­en­dar, he said, and car­ries a mes­sage for peo­ple go­ing through hard times.

“Di­vali tells us that light will come, vic­to­ry will come, tri­umph will come.”

He said one deya could light a mil­lion more and urged peo­ple to share their light with fam­i­ly, col­leagues and their com­mu­ni­ty. He al­so said an­cient so­ci­eties used lamps, sweets and song to lift spir­its dur­ing the dark sea­son, sup­port­ing men­tal as well as phys­i­cal health.