Sto­ries by Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

A 12-mem­ber com­mit­tee head­ed by for­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine, and in­clud­ing for­mer Petrotrin re­fin­ery man­agers and OW­TU of­fi­cials, has been man­dat­ed to de­vel­op a strat­e­gy for the re­fin­ery’s re­ac­ti­va­tion and sub­mit a re­port by Oc­to­ber.

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal re­vealed the de­vel­op­ment yes­ter­day at the post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing held at the Red House.

Mooni­lal said the min­istry had sub­mit­ted to yes­ter­day’s Cab­i­net meet­ing a note to es­tab­lish a com­mit­tee to de­vel­op a strat­e­gy for the re­ac­ti­va­tion of the Guaracara re­fin­ery, which has been out of com­mis­sion since 2018.

Mooni­lal cit­ed the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress’ Gen­er­al Elec­tion com­mit­ment to re­open the re­fin­ery, “which was slammed shut” (sic), lead­ing to so­cio-eco­nom­ic dis­lo­ca­tions.

Since the clo­sure, the hold­ing com­pa­ny has un­der­tak­en three process­es to iden­ti­fy a pre­ferred in­vestor to restart the re­fin­ery. That has led to the in­ter­est of sev­er­al en­ti­ties, Mooni­lal added.

“Notwith­stand­ing those pre­vi­ous ef­forts, the new Gov­ern­ment is com­mit­ted to es­tab­lish­ing its own agen­da to re­vi­talise the oil/gas sec­tor, which con­tin­ues to ex­pe­ri­ence a sus­tained de­cline in both oil and gas pro­duc­tion. Ramp­ing up of pro­duc­tion of oil and gas is crit­i­cal to any eco­nom­ic boom we project.”

With that in mind, Mooni­lal said the Gov­ern­ment has tak­en im­me­di­ate steps to­wards re­ac­ti­vat­ing the re­fin­ery and the com­mit­tee was ap­proved by Cab­i­net.

The team led by for­mer min­is­ter Ram­nar­ine com­pris­es:

• For­mer Petrotrin vice pres­i­dent of fi­nance, Shari­ba Ali Ra­jah.

• For­mer vice pres­i­dent of re­tail and mar­ket­ing, Kelvin Har­nanan.

• For­mer re­fin­ery man­ag­er, Gow­tam Ma­haraj (now chair­man of the Pe­nal/Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion.

• UWI lec­tur­er in en­gi­neer­ing/main­te­nance, Kishore Ja­groo.

• Op­er­a­tions and Process en­gi­neer, Leslie Chang.

• OW­TU branch pres­i­dent, Christo­pher Jack­man.

• Elec­tri­cal sys­tems/for­mer OW­TU month­ly rep­re­sen­ta­tive, Dan­ny Goolcha­ran.

• Plan­ning and Eco­nom­ics Sched­ul­ing com­mer­cial port ma­rine man­ag­er, Mar­garet De Sil­va Okan­do.

• En­er­gy Min­istry se­nior chem­i­cal en­gi­neer, Yashee Car­ring­ton.

• En­er­gy Min­istry chem­i­cal en­gi­neer, Anuskha Ben­ny-Sookoo

• Port, ma­rine and ship­ping ex­pert, Len Chan Chow

Mooni­lal, who not­ed the Oil­field Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU) had al­ways ex­pressed an in­ter­est in the mat­ter, said three peo­ple on the team are nom­i­nat­ed by the union. He didn’t think that gave the union an un­fair ad­van­tage in the sit­u­a­tion: “We just want to get an hon­est, in­de­pen­dent tech­ni­cal as­sess­ment.”

The team’s terms of ref­er­ence are to ex­am­ine the tech­ni­cal eval­u­a­tion for the re­turn of re­fin­ing, hu­man re­source re­quire­ments, fi­nan­cial, reg­u­la­to­ry and feed­stock re­quire­ments and com­mer­cial arrange­ments.

Mooni­lal said Gov­ern­ment hoped the com­mit­tee will take a max­i­mum of four months, maybe less to sub­mit a re­port, “and will speak to the is­sue of the re­open­ing of the re­fin­ery, its cur­rent state and tech­ni­cal as­sess­ment of its ca­pac­i­ty and a pro­jec­tion of what will be re­quired in terms of feed­stock sup­ply, hu­man re­sources, tech­ni­cal as­sess­ment, readi­ness and the in­frac­ture and util­i­ty pro­file as ex­ists.”

The com­mit­tee’s re­port will be made pub­lic.

Mooni­lal said the com­mit­tee would not deal with who should be an in­vestor, but its work would in­form fur­ther de­ci­sions on a choice of “play­ers, stake­hold­ers, part­ners” to re­open the re­fin­ery.

It will al­so in­form the Gov­ern­ment to what ex­tent it may look at a cap­i­tal out­lay and eq­ui­ty par­tic­i­pa­tion for any arrange­ment.

“Then we’ll get fur­ther as­sis­tance with com­mer­cial and con­trac­tu­al mat­ters,” Mooni­lal said.

Pre­vi­ous bid­ders have been placed on hold pend­ing the team’s re­port.

“This re­port will in­form our work fur­ther on those en­ti­ties that have al­ready ex­pressed in­ter­est and any oth­ers that may ex­press in­ter­est in the fu­ture. Apart from those that are al­ready in the pub­lic space, we’ve re­ceived in­for­ma­tion from oth­er en­ti­ties, but we’d put all on hold pend­ing re­fin­ery as­sess­ment,” the min­is­ter added.

The hold­ing com­pa­ny and sub­sidiaries will pro­vide sup­port as a sec­re­tari­at for the team and make avail­able all doc­u­ments, tech­ni­cal re­ports and fi­nan­cials need­ed.

The com­mit­tee will meet very soon. Mem­bers will re­ceive a stipend, which Mooni­lal said he didn’t ex­pect to be much.

He said the Gov­ern­ment has not­ed that the moth­balled re­fin­ery has utilised tax­pay­ers’ funds to the tune of $470,000 month­ly, paid to a con­trac­tor for ser­vices as­so­ci­at­ed with the re­fin­ery.

“We’ve been in­formed the to­tal cost in­curred by Guaracara is es­ti­mat­ed to be $5.6 mil­lion per month (sic) when one looks at oth­er costs as­so­ci­at­ed with the re­fin­ery moth­balling,” he added.