RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

As the Gov­ern­ment pre­pares to hold talks with US en­er­gy gi­ant Chevron Cor­po­ra­tion on re­newed in­vest­ment in Trinidad and To­ba­go’s en­er­gy sec­tor, an­oth­er un­named Amer­i­can com­pa­ny has ex­pressed in­ter­est in the shut­tered Pointe-à-Pierre Re­fin­ery, En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal has re­vealed.

Dr Mooni­lal said a vir­tu­al meet­ing is sched­uled for to­mor­row be­tween of­fi­cials of Chevron and the Min­istry of En­er­gy to dis­cuss in­vest­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties and the po­ten­tial use of idle en­er­gy in­fra­struc­ture in Trinidad and To­ba­go. He said the dis­cus­sions fol­low a meet­ing last Sun­day be­tween Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and US En­er­gy Sec­re­tary Chris Wright.

Dr Mooni­lal said talks with Chevron will ex­plore sev­er­al ar­eas, in­clud­ing en­er­gy sec­tor in­vest­ment and the util­i­sa­tion of ex­ist­ing fa­cil­i­ties that may ben­e­fit the com­pa­ny. Chevron, one of the world’s largest oil and gas firms, pre­vi­ous­ly op­er­at­ed in Trinidad and To­ba­go be­fore ex­it­ing in 2017 af­ter sell­ing its lo­cal as­sets to Shell plc for around US$250 mil­lion.

“We are hop­ing that we can speak to them now to re-at­tract them, so to speak, back to Trinidad and To­ba­go,” Dr Mooni­lal said, not­ing Chevron’s re­gion­al pres­ence. He point­ed to the com­pa­ny’s op­er­a­tions in neigh­bour­ing Guyana and Suri­name and said Trinidad’s prox­im­i­ty to oil pro­duc­ers could cre­ate op­por­tu­ni­ties for stor­age, lo­gis­tics and oth­er en­er­gy-re­lat­ed busi­ness.

At the same time, he said an­oth­er US-based com­pa­ny has sig­nalled in­ter­est in the Pointe-à-Pierre Re­fin­ery and its as­so­ci­at­ed in­fra­struc­ture. “We are do­ing the ini­tial pre­lim­i­nary work now by way of cor­re­spon­dence and so on,” Dr Mooni­lal said, adding that fol­low-up vir­tu­al meet­ings and site vis­its could be next steps.

The Gov­ern­ment is al­so con­tin­u­ing dis­cus­sions with lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al en­ti­ties on restart­ing the re­fin­ery, which has been idle for near­ly sev­en years. Dr Mooni­lal said he re­cent­ly met with rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gies and Tech­nolo­gies, the com­pa­ny linked to the Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union, which pre­sent­ed an up­dat­ed pro­pos­al for the fa­cil­i­ty.

Next week, Ital­ian en­gi­neer­ing and con­struc­tion firm Tec­n­i­mont is ex­pect­ed to vis­it Trinidad and To­ba­go to dis­cuss po­ten­tial fi­nanc­ing arrange­ments for the re­fin­ery project, he added. “We are talk­ing to all who would be in­ter­est­ed in fi­nanc­ing and get­ting on board the re­fin­ery restart,” Dr Mooni­lal said, not­ing that at­tract­ing cap­i­tal in­vest­ment re­mains key.

Ex­perts who have in­spect­ed the re­fin­ery rat­ed its con­di­tion be­tween five and six on a scale of 10 in terms of main­te­nance, he said, un­der­scor­ing the sig­nif­i­cant work and in­vest­ment need­ed for a restart.

Mean­while, the min­is­ter said the Gov­ern­ment is fi­nal­is­ing arrange­ments to be­gin ne­go­ti­a­tions with Chi­na Na­tion­al Off­shore Oil Cor­po­ra­tion over two off­shore ex­plo­ration blocks along the north coast. CNOOC is al­ready in­volved in a ma­jor off­shore de­vel­op­ment in Guyana along­side Exxon­Mo­bil.

Dr Mooni­lal al­so not­ed that re­cent in­creas­es in glob­al oil prices could boost Trinidad and To­ba­go’s month­ly rev­enue. How­ev­er, he warned that the coun­try con­tin­ues to im­port re­fined pe­tro­le­um prod­ucts through Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny due to the re­fin­ery’s clo­sure—mean­ing high­er oil prices could al­so raise the cost of im­port­ed fu­els.

“You make more mon­ey on one hand, and then you pay for prod­ucts on the oth­er hand,” Dr Mooni­lal said, ar­gu­ing that the re­fin­ery’s clo­sure has lim­it­ed the na­tion’s abil­i­ty to ful­ly ben­e­fit from ris­ing glob­al oil prices.