GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Se­nior Re­porter

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

The long-an­tic­i­pat­ed restart of T&T’s re­fin­ery op­er­a­tions is inch­ing clos­er to re­al­i­ty, with Min­is­ter Roodal Mooni­lal con­firm­ing that the Gov­ern­ment re­mains on sched­ule to re­ceive a crit­i­cal re­port by the end of No­vem­ber.

The re­port, which will guide Cab­i­net-lev­el de­ci­sions, is ex­pect­ed to out­line the tech­ni­cal, fi­nan­cial, and safe­ty re­quire­ments nec­es­sary for re­sum­ing op­er­a­tions.

Mooni­lal, who spoke to mem­ber of the me­dia at Am­cham T&T's 2025 Health Safe­ty Se­cu­ri­ty and En­vi­ron­ment (HSSE) con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, said the Prime Min­is­ter has al­so ex­pressed a strong in­ter­est in the mat­ter, and the com­mit­tee has con­duct­ed a de­tailed tech­ni­cal and fi­nan­cial as­sess­ment of the re­fin­ery’s var­i­ous units.

Mooni­lal em­pha­sised that the com­mit­tee tasked with eval­u­at­ing the re­fin­ery has con­duct­ed a “thor­ough, com­pre­hen­sive in­spec­tion and as­sess­ment” of all units, in­clud­ing the unutilised $3 bil­lion ul­tra-low sul­phur diesel plant built dur­ing the Patrick Man­ning ad­min­is­tra­tion. De­spite his­tor­i­cal de­sign is­sues, the gov­ern­ment is ex­plor­ing op­tions to bring the fa­cil­i­ty on­line.

"We are very pos­i­tive," Mooni­lal stat­ed. "If all goes well in the new year, we can lay out the op­tions quick­ly, giv­en what would be re­quired tech­ni­cal­ly and fi­nan­cial­ly."

The min­is­ter al­so un­der­scored the im­por­tance of in­ter­na­tion­al safe­ty stan­dards and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, not­ing that any restart must meet rig­or­ous health and safe­ty pro­to­cols.

"It has to be safe from the start," he said, point­ing to the glob­al stan­dards that must be ad­hered.

On the role of the Oil­fields Work­ers' Trade Union (OW­TU), Mooni­lal said the union’s af­fil­i­at­ed has sub­mit­ted a bid and is rep­re­sent­ed on the restart com­mit­tee.

"They are al­ready in­volved in shap­ing the re­port," he said adding, "Their fu­ture role will be de­ter­mined by the con­tents of that re­port."

Ad­dress­ing con­cerns about the is­sue of quar­ry li­cence Mooni­lal con­firmed that the mat­ter re­mains ac­tive.

"We have been in touch, the min­istry has been in touch with a new as­so­ci­a­tion to us. We have been in touch with them, we are look­ing at their mem­bers and some of the is­sues. And in the com­ing days, I would not rebel to the idea of hav­ing dis­cus­sions with per­sons giv­en their con­cerns.

"I mean, we are look­ing at their con­cerns. Some of the state­ments made in the press, I am not sure they are com­plete­ly ac­cu­rate but hav­ing said that, we are not risk-averse," Mooni­lal said.

In de­liv­er­ing his ad­dress, the en­er­gy min­is­ter an­nounced a sig­nif­i­cant turn­around in this coun­try's en­er­gy sec­tor, mark­ing the end of a decade-long de­cline in oil and gas pro­duc­tion.

"...Our short jour­ney so far has been chal­leng­ing. Af­ter ten years of de­cline in the en­er­gy sec­tor I am pleased to re­port that we stopped the de­cline and reg­is­tered a 5.5 per cent in­crease in oil pro­duc­tion from 52,357 bar­rels per day in April 2025 to 55,271 bar­rels per day by Oc­to­ber 2025. Gas pro­duc­tion al­so rose from 2.41 to 2.63 bil­lion cu­bic feet per day be­tween April and June 2025. We are mov­ing steadi­ly in the right di­rec­tion."

OW­TU re­sponds

An­cel Ro­get, Pres­i­dent Gen­er­al OW­TU re­spond­ed with strong sup­port to Min­is­ter Dr. Roodal Mooni­lal’s re­cent re­marks on the fu­ture of the Pointe-à-Pierre re­fin­ery and the broad­er en­er­gy sec­tor.

Ro­get de­scribed the Min­is­ter’s com­ments as "com­pre­hen­sive" and "aligned with the shared vi­sion" of the OW­TU, em­pha­sis­ing the union’s readi­ness to col­lab­o­rate with the gov­ern­ment on restart­ing the re­fin­ery and re­vi­tal­iz­ing the na­tion­al en­er­gy land­scape.

Ro­get ac­knowl­edged that the re­fin­ery restart re­mains in the draft stage but stressed that the OW­TU has long ad­vo­cat­ed for its re­vival.

"We have been deal­ing with this is­sue for quite a while,” he said adding, "The Min­is­ter’s state­ment was very com­pre­hen­sive in deal­ing with the en­tire en­er­gy sec­tor, and we em­brace his vi­sion—it is one and the same with ours."

He re­it­er­at­ed the union’s po­si­tion that the re­fin­ery should nev­er have been shut down, blam­ing the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion un­der for­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Stu­art Young for what he called "ab­ject ne­glect" of en­er­gy as­sets, par­tic­u­lar­ly with­in Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um.

"This coun­try lost bil­lions in for­eign ex­change due to that bad de­ci­sion," Ro­get stat­ed.

Ad­dress­ing oil spills

On the is­sue of oil spills and leaks, Mooni­lal said this rep­re­sent a sig­nif­i­cant per­cent­age of the re­portable in­ci­dents in the up­stream both on land and in ma­rine ar­eas.

From 2016 through the first half of 2025, T&T ex­pe­ri­enced 1,858 oil spills, with 71 per cent oc­cur­ring on land. There were 51 spills in 2016, 302 spills in 2023 and 180 spills to June 2025. In to­tal, 92,335 bar­rels were spilled, with 83,569 bar­rels re­cov­ered by Her­itage and its pre­de­ces­sor Petrotrin.

"In were re­spon­si­ble for 80 per cent of the num­ber of the oil spills and 94 per cent of the bar­rels of oil spilled. Of sig­nif­i­cance was the 2017 Pointe-a-Pierre Re­fin­ery Tank #70 leak which re­sult­ed in a spill of 79,547 bar­rels, most of which was main­ly con­tained on­site.

"These fig­ures do not in­clude oil spilled from the Gulf Stream ves­sel oil spill in­ci­dent in To­ba­go in 2024. The quan­ti­ty of oil re­cov­ered from the ves­sel was in the range of 31,000 to 32,000 bar­rels and the quan­ti­ty of liq­uid waste re­cov­ered was 60,000 bar­rels of oil and wa­ter. There was an un­ac­count­able quan­ti­ty of oil which was ab­sorbed by sand along the shore­line and some drift­ed out of our ter­ri­to­r­i­al wa­ters," the min­is­ter out­lined.

He added the in­crease in the num­ber of oil spills is a cause for con­cern as oil spills have dev­as­tat­ing ef­fects on lo­cal economies, land and ma­rine ecosys­tems and dis­rupts eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty.