By Kevon Felmine

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries Stu­art Young has dis­missed crit­i­cism of Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny’s US$50.2 mil­lion fu­el deal with Ja­maican re­fin­ery Petro­jam, call­ing it "mis­chief."

Speak­ing to re­porters in Point Lisas yes­ter­day, Young clar­i­fied that the trans­ac­tion was the ful­fil­ment of a com­mit­ment he had made dur­ing dis­cus­sions with Ja­maica’s Min­is­ter of Sci­ence, En­er­gy, and Tech­nol­o­gy, Daryl Vaz over the past two years to strength­en bi­lat­er­al re­la­tions.

“Petrotrin’s re­fin­ery is 175,000 bar­rels a day. The Petro­jam re­fin­ery is much small­er—38,000 bar­rels of oil per day. So, all this trans­ac­tion in­volves is that we have agreed, and are cur­rent­ly fi­nal­is­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions, to pur­chase about 500,000 bar­rels of ma­rine fu­el, which Paria has al­ready been pur­chas­ing. It is a pro­mo­tion of our bi­lat­er­al re­la­tion­ship with Ja­maica, of which I am very proud,” Young stat­ed.

He em­pha­sised that one of the key dri­vers of eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion for T&T is ma­rine traf­fic, in­clud­ing de­vel­op­ing dry dock­ing fa­cil­i­ties and at­tract­ing more ves­sels to the coun­try.

In a me­dia re­lease on Sun­day, Paria an­nounced its agree­ment with Petro­jam to sup­ply 540,000 bar­rels of very low sul­phur fu­el oil over six months. The com­pa­ny re­ceived its first ship­ment of 50,000 bar­rels on Sat­ur­day. Ac­cord­ing to Paria, this fu­el will be used for bunker­ing op­er­a­tions, a key con­trib­u­tor of for­eign ex­change.

Ma­yaro MP Rush­ton Paray, in a state­ment, said T&T’s en­er­gy dom­i­nance has waned un­der poor lead­er­ship, cul­mi­nat­ing in the irony of po­ten­tial­ly pur­chas­ing fu­el oil from Petro­jam. Once a re­gion­al pow­er­house, he said T&T now grap­ples with pol­i­cy fail­ures, missed op­por­tu­ni­ties, and de­clin­ing in­flu­ence. Paray said ur­gent re­forms and vi­sion­ary lead­er­ship are need­ed to re­claim the na­tion’s in­dus­tri­al her­itage.

Young said he had spo­ken with Vaz en route to Point Lisas, and he want­ed to ad­dress con­cerns and counter what he de­scribed as de­lib­er­ate mis­in­for­ma­tion from op­po­si­tion mem­bers and the usu­al naysay­ers.

“The Gov­ern­ment will al­ways seek op­por­tu­ni­ties to sup­port our Cari­com neigh­bours,” Young said, not­ing that T&T en­joys a trade sur­plus of hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars with Ja­maica. He ar­gued that this deal ben­e­fits both coun­tries.

Ad­dress­ing pub­lic con­cerns, Young crit­i­cised cer­tain in­di­vid­u­als who, he said, were mak­ing mis­lead­ing state­ments for po­lit­i­cal gain.

“I saw a cer­tain Op­po­si­tion mem­ber to­day post­ing a video, speak­ing as though ‘oh, this is a dis­as­ter for Trinidad & To­ba­go be­cause we have a re­fin­ery.’ But we all know that, un­for­tu­nate­ly, the re­fin­ery had to be moth­balled and put in­to preser­va­tion in 2018 be­cause it was los­ing bil­lions of dol­lars. What we have to­day is a small but mean­ing­ful deal with Ja­maica.”

Young fur­ther ex­plained that the agree­ment aligns with Cari­com’s ob­jec­tives. He clar­i­fied that Paria has been pur­chas­ing fu­el on the in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket and prof­itably re­selling it do­mes­ti­cal­ly and ex­ter­nal­ly. The de­ci­sion to source fu­el from Petro­jam was al­so based on cost-ef­fec­tive­ness. How­ev­er, he stressed that none of the fu­el re­fined in Ja­maica would be used in the do­mes­tic mar­ket—it is sole­ly for bunker­ing op­er­a­tions, sup­port­ing ves­sels en­ter­ing T&T's wa­ters. He al­so point­ed out that this deal rep­re­sents on­ly a small por­tion of Paria’s im­ports.

“Five hun­dred thou­sand bar­rels com­pared to the 17 mil­lion bar­rels Paria pur­chas­es an­nu­al­ly—so this is com­plete mis­chief. It changes noth­ing in a neg­a­tive man­ner for Trinidad & To­ba­go. We could not re­fine this prod­uct prof­itably in the way we are pur­chas­ing and sell­ing it now, and I have ab­solute­ly no hes­i­ta­tion in say­ing that I am proud.”

When asked why Ja­maica ap­pears to have more suc­cess in op­er­at­ing its re­fin­ery com­pared to T&T, Young ex­plained that small­er re­finer­ies are sim­pler to man­age. He not­ed that dur­ing the 2010-2015 pe­ri­od, a de­cline in do­mes­tic oil pro­duc­tion meant Petrotrin had to pur­chase ad­di­tion­al crude—up to 100,000 bar­rels per day by 2018—to sus­tain re­fin­ery op­er­a­tions. This re­sult­ed in sig­nif­i­cant loss­es, cost­ing around US$8 mil­lion per day.

Young added that re­finer­ies world­wide are strug­gling with slim mar­gins, with many shut­ting down due to un­prof­itabil­i­ty.