Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley spent a por­tion of his ad­dress at the in­ter­na­tion­al en­er­gy con­fer­ence be­ing held in Guyana this morn­ing pro­mot­ing the moth­balled Petrotrin re­fin­ery Pointe-a-Pierre for sale.

"The ma­jor­i­ty of Caribbean coun­tries re­ly on im­ports of pe­tro­le­um prod­ucts which rep­re­sent 87 per cent of pri­ma­ry en­er­gy con­sump­tion.

As a re­sult oil-im­port­ing coun­tries in the Caribbean have re­port­ed spend­ing up to 15 per cent of an­nu­al GDP in fu­el im­ports," Row­ley stat­ed.

Row­ley said the heavy de­pen­dence on im­port­ed en­er­gy has neg­a­tive­ly af­fect­ed the eco­nom­ic per­for­mance of many Caribbean na­tions and con­tributed to in­sta­bil­i­ty in both fis­cal and ex­ter­nal ac­counts, in­clud­ing T&T which was im­port­ing most of its crude oil and then cre­at­ing re­fined prod­ucts with do­mes­tic needs and for the re­gion­al mar­ket.

"This im­port and re­fined mod­el was be­ing car­ried on with sig­nif­i­cant loan sup­port from the na­tion­al trea­sury by 2018 in the ab­sence of an im­proved crude oil sup­ply the ac­cu­mu­lat­ed debt and pro­jec­tions for sus­tained loss­es re­sult­ed in a re­struc­tur­ing of the state-owned com­pa­ny and this in­clud­ed the clo­sure of the re­fin­ery which in the ab­sence of a new source of crude stands moth­balled at Pointe-a-Pierre in Trinidad," he said.

"This re­fin­ery and its sup­port­ing in­fra­struc­ture are avail­able for restart, up­grade and use on rea­son­able terms to any in­ter­est­ed re­fin­er or crude sup­pli­er," he said.

Lat­er in his ad­dress as Row­ley spoke on the pro­posed Drag­on Gas deal he again re­mind­ed the at­ten­dees of the avail­abil­i­ty of the re­fin­ery for sale.

"We are still ex­plor­ing the mar­ket for a user for the re­fin­ery as men­tioned," he said.

The sec­ond an­nu­al In­ter­na­tion­al En­er­gy Con­fer­ence and Ex­po is be­ing held at the Guyana Mar­riott Ho­tel in George­town.

Row­ley is among sev­er­al heads of gov­ern­ment who are in at­ten­dance at the event.