En­er­gy ex­pert and for­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan says there is a need for a rep­utable in­ter­na­tion­al in­vestor to re­open Petrotrin’s Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery.

Her com­ments fol­low last week’s High Court rul­ing, which in­di­cat­ed that the Oil­field Work­ers’ Trade Union and its as­so­ci­at­ed com­pa­ny, Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gies and Tech­nolo­gies Lim­it­ed, have been held li­able for over US$4 mil­lion in loans it se­cured for its bid to ac­quire the re­fin­ery af­ter it was closed.

The loan cen­tred around two agree­ments en­tered in­to be­tween KCL Cap­i­tal and the OTWU, through its then-trustees Ozzi War­wick, Ray­mond Hug­gins, and now Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of En­er­gy, Ernesto Kezar, be­tween No­vem­ber 2019 and May 2020.

KCL Cap­i­tal filed the law­suit af­ter the prin­ci­pal and ac­crued in­ter­est un­der both loans were not paid.

Seep­er­sad-Bachan told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that she be­lieved that the re­open­ing of the re­fin­ery should have been a col­lab­o­ra­tive ap­proach and one that in­volved reg­u­la­to­ry over­sight, with pri­vate sec­tor in­vestors.

“Bear in mind that if you have to ap­proach the in­ter­na­tion­al fi­nan­cial mar­kets for debt fi­nanc­ing. They are go­ing to want to look for some form of eq­ui­ty fi­nanc­ing, even if it is as much as 10-15 per cent of that to­tal. Fi­nan­cial cap­i­tal out­lay, which we ex­pect to be about US$1 bil­lion,” she said.

In Feb­ru­ary, OAN­DO PLC, a Niger­ian com­pa­ny, was se­lect­ed as the pre­ferred bid­der un­der the last gov­ern­ment, but the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion re­peat­ed­ly stat­ed that it would work with the OW­TU to at­tempt to restart the re­fin­ery’s op­er­a­tions.

Asked if the Gov­ern­ment should restart the bid­ding process, Seep­er­sad-Bachan out­lined that once the cri­te­ria are met with the two short­list­ed bid­ders, the Gov­ern­ment should work with them.

“You have to en­sure that who­ev­er is com­ing to the ta­ble to bid the in­vestor has the cap­i­tal. They have the where­with­al; they have the tech­nol­o­gy and in ad­di­tion to that, they come with mar­kets. Whilst we have eq­ui­ty crude that can be used, this re­fin­ery re­quires a cer­tain amount of im­port­ed for­eign crude. And in that case, if we are talk­ing about im­port­ed crude, that par­tic­u­lar bid­der must have ac­cess to the in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket,” she high­light­ed.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal on if the Gov­ern­ment was go­ing back to the draw­ing board and find bid­ders in light of the High Court  rul­ing against OW­TU, he said “We will ac­ti­vate the re­fin­ery restart com­mit­tee as a pre­lude to fur­ther en­gage­ment.”  

When pressed fur­ther on the mat­ter via What­sApp, the min­is­ter did not re­spond.

Some­one, who is close to the process, in­di­cat­ed that the Gov­ern­ment has two op­tions: one ap­proach the two short­list­ed bid­ders from be­fore, who were CRO Con­sor­tium and Oan­do, or two, col­lapse the process and start over.

“Start­ing over means an­oth­er year or year and a half be­fore they can reach their fi­nal agree­ment. The Gov­ern­ment is go­ing to be stuck with the ex­pen­di­ture for that re­fin­ery. They’re go­ing to have to keep pre­serv­ing the re­fin­ery ba­si­cal­ly, which is a cost to the Gov­ern­ment and tax­pay­ers for that pe­ri­od. That is go­ing to de­lay the process. The oth­er one is to go for­ward with both bid­ders. The two bid­ders seem to have had the fi­nanc­ing or the where­with­al to restart the re­fin­ery and ne­go­ti­ate with both bid­ders and see which bid is best,” the source dis­closed.