RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal says Gov­ern­ment has met with Oan­do PLC and has in­formed the com­pa­ny that the process is con­tin­u­ing now that the Re­fin­ery Restart Com­mit­tee has been ap­point­ed.

The com­mit­tee is head­ed by for­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine. It al­so in­cludes for­mer man­ag­er of the re­fin­ery Gow­tam Ma­haraj, who is al­so chair­man of the Pe­nal/Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, and branch pres­i­dent of the Oil­field Work­ers Trade Union Christo­pher Jack­man, among oth­ers.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, Mooni­lal said Gov­ern­ment has been keep­ing Oan­do in­formed of de­vel­op­ments.

Asked whether bids will be re­opened, the min­is­ter said, “I ex­pect when the re­port is pre­sent­ed by the com­mit­tee, we will have an­oth­er round of di­a­logue with all in­ter­est­ed par­ties. The process un­der­tak­en by the last PNM gov­ern­ment is be­ing re­viewed.” 

The Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment ad­min­is­tra­tion had opened bids for the re­fin­ery, and among the com­pa­nies ex­press­ing in­ter­est were Jin­dal Steel & Pow­er (In­dia) and Oan­do PLC (Nige­ria).

Jin­dal was linked with a pro­posed US$500 mil­lion in­vest­ment, but fol­low­ing po­lit­i­cal con­tro­ver­sy and op­po­si­tion ac­cu­sa­tions of con­flict of in­ter­est be­tween In­di­an busi­ness­man Naveen Jin­dal and for­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, Jin­dal even­tu­al­ly with­drew the of­fer.

On Feb­ru­ary 27 this year, the then Cab­i­net se­lect­ed Nige­ria’s Oan­do PLC as the pre­ferred bid­der for the re­fin­ery fol­low­ing ex­ten­sive eval­u­a­tion by a com­mit­tee and sub­com­mit­tee.

Back then, the for­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Stu­art Young clar­i­fied that the lease would main­tain gov­ern­ment own­er­ship and al­low Paria Fu­el Trad­ing to sup­ply lo­gis­tics. How­ev­er, the UNC de­mand­ed trans­paren­cy around Oan­do’s fi­nances and lo­cal part­ner­ships.

The OW­TU al­so raised con­cerns.

In May, when the UNC won the elec­tion, Mooni­lal an­nounced that the ne­go­ti­a­tions with Oan­do had been put on hold and were un­der re­view. He in­di­cat­ed that an in­de­pen­dent as­sess­ment will in­volve stake­hold­ers such as the OW­TU and for­mer work­ers.

Ear­li­er in March, a month be­fore the elec­tion, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said that her par­ty would not ho­n­our any agree­ment the PNM en­ters in­to re­gard­ing the Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery. She al­so claimed the gov­ern­ment was “col­lud­ing” with Nico­las Maduro’s Venezuela regime, which is the “worst Bend Over” in T&T’s en­er­gy sec­tor his­to­ry.

She al­so vowed to pur­sue in­ves­ti­ga­tions against every­one who par­tic­i­pates in this theft of the Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery as­sets. She not­ed that the Re­fin­ery Restart Com­mit­tee will as­sess all as­pects of the re­fin­ery open­ing. 

The Re­fin­ery Start­up Com­mit­tee is chaired by Ram­nar­ine and in­cludes Shari­ba Ali Ra­jah, Kelvin Har­nanan, Gow­tam Ma­haraj, Kishore Ja­groo, Leslie Chang, Christo­pher Jack­man, Dan­ny Goolcha­ran, Mar­garet De Sil­va Ocan­do, Yashee Car­ring­ton, Anuskha Ben­ny-Sookoo, and Len Chan Chow.