Al­most a year ago, on Jan­u­ary 11, 2017, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley ad­dressed the na­tion about the poor fi­nan­cial state of en­er­gy com­pa­ny Petrotrin. At that time, he said it could not be busi­ness as usu­al with the state-owned com­pa­ny be­cause it was al­ready a drain on the Trea­sury.

Petrotrin is once again ex­pect­ed to be in fo­cus when Dr Row­ley speaks to the na­tion in a live broad­cast at 7.30 this evening, just days af­ter he met with di­rec­tors of the com­pa­ny and re­ceived a re­port on plans for its re­struc­tur­ing. The PM is al­so ex­pect­ed to ad­dress the is­sue of ris­ing crime—the mur­der toll hit 493 at the end of 2017 and al­ready, in just six days, the mur­der rate has reached 17.

The econ­o­my and job loss­es are al­so ex­pect­ed to be ad­dressed. The in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions cli­mate in T&T is al­so ex­pect­ed to come in­to fo­cus. The Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­tre, dur­ing a new con­fer­ence on Thurs­day, called on the Gov­ern­ment to set­tle all out­stand­ing is­sues af­fect­ing the labour sec­tor, in­clud­ing out­stand­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions.

At the start of 2017, there was the threat of a strike at Petrotrin as the Oil­fields Work­ers Trade Union (OW­TU), led by An­cel Ro­get, pushed for salary in­creas­es for work­ers, re­ject­ing a three per cent of­fer for the 2014-2017 pe­ri­od.

Petrotrin of­fi­cials said it could not agree to a salary hike as rev­enue had de­clined by as much as 50 per cent be­tween 2012-2016.

Gov­ern­ment in­ter­vened and the threat of a three-month strike was avert­ed, with the union agree­ing to a five per cent wage in­crease.

Petrotrin, the coun­try’s ma­jor oil pro­duc­er, ac­counts for more than half of the coun­try’s to­tal oil pro­duc­tion of about 72,000 bar­rels per day and is a net earn­er of for­eign ex­change. The com­pa­ny is al­so an im­por­tant con­trib­u­tor to tax rev­enues and a guar­an­tor of the coun­try’s en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty.

How­ev­er, in re­cent years, cash flow dif­fi­cul­ties have re­sult­ed in ar­rears of pay­ments of roy­al­ties and tax­es to the Trea­sury of ap­prox­i­mate­ly $1.2 bil­lion. Due to de­clin­ing earn­ings it had re­ceived gov­ern­ment guar­an­tees in 2016 for short-term loans of up to US$230 mil­lion in or­der to con­tin­ue op­er­at­ing and meet­ing ba­sic fi­nan­cial oblig­a­tions.

Petrotrin's an­nu­al wage bill for its 5,000 em­ploy­ees is close to $2 bil­lion—ap­prox­i­mate­ly 50 per cent of its an­nu­al op­er­at­ing costs.

In March, Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley ap­point­ed a sev­en-mem­ber com­mit­tee chaired by Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of En­er­gy Sel­wyn Lash­ley to re­view Petrotrin's op­er­a­tion. The com­mit­tee sub­mit­ted its re­port four months lat­er, rec­om­mend­ing that the com­pa­ny be bro­ken up in­to three dif­fer­ent ar­eas: Ex­plo­ration and Pro­duc­tion, Trin­mar and Re­fin­ing and Mar­ket­ing.

By year’s end, the Petrotrin board, now chaired by busi­ness­man Wil­fred Es­pinet, was still con­duct­ing its re­view of the com­mit­tee’s re­port.

There have been oth­er sig­nif­i­cant de­vel­op­ments at the en­er­gy com­pa­ny in the past year. In Ju­ly, af­ter two years at the helm, An­drew Jupiter re­signed as chair­man cit­ing per­son­al rea­sons. He was re­placed by Es­pinet in mid-Sep­tem­ber.

At around that time, the com­pa­ny’s In­ter­nal Au­dit De­part­ment de­tect­ed an $80 mil­lion over­pay­ment for oil sup­plied to the com­pa­ny by con­trac­tor A and V Oil and Gas from its Cat­shill Field.

The au­dit in­di­cat­ed that be­tween Jan­u­ary to June 2017, Petrotrin paid for close to 350,000 bar­rels of oil which it nev­er re­ceived.

De­tails of the in­ter­nal au­dit were first made pub­lic by Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar at a po­lit­i­cal meet­ing in ear­ly Sep­tem­ber when she called for the res­ig­na­tion of En­er­gy Min­is­ter Franklin Khan over what she called the “fake oil scan­dal”.

In­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to that mat­ter are on­go­ing. Petrotrin has can­celled its con­tract with A and V.

Petrotrin pres­i­dent Fitzroy Hare­wood has ten­dered his res­ig­na­tion for “per­son­al rea­sons”. It takes ef­fect next month.

—with re­port­ing by Rose­marie Sant