Asha Javeed

Lead Ed­i­tor In­ves­ti­ga­tions

asha.javeed@guardian.co.tt

If you’re in­ter­est­ed in run­ning a re­fin­ery, make Her­itage an of­fer.

That’s the po­si­tion of chair­man of Her­itage, Michael Quam­i­na. He said that af­ter go­ing through the for­mal process they have not been able to se­cure an ap­pro­pri­ate in­vestor.

“We’re now go­ing through a bit more of an in­for­mal process, where ba­si­cal­ly peo­ple who have an in­ter­est in the re­fin­ery can ex­press their in­ter­est to us,” he told Guardian Me­dia.

Quam­i­na said it’s un­like­ly that Her­itage would get back in­to the re­fin­ery busi­ness as it doesn’t fit its present busi­ness mod­el.

“There are sev­er­al ex­pres­sions of in­ter­est and we’re ex­plor­ing all of them,” he said.

He said if an of­fer is at­trac­tive enough, he would take it back to the stake­hold­er (Gov­ern­ment) for fu­ture con­sid­er­a­tion.

“There’s no beau­ty con­test,” he added.

The re­fin­ery was moth­balled in Oc­to­ber 2018 fol­low­ing the clo­sure of Petrotrin. Since then, the Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU) out­fit, Pa­tri­ot­ic, was the front-line bid­der for the re­fin­ery but its fi­nan­cial pro­pos­als for tak­ing over the re­fin­ery were re­ject­ed three times by the Gov­ern­ment-ap­point­ed com­mit­tee and sub­se­quent­ly, the Cab­i­net.

On Sep­tem­ber 20, 2019, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert an­nounced that a com­pa­ny owned by the OW­TU was the pre­ferred bid­der to own and op­er­ate the re­fin­ery with a US$700 mil­lion of­fer.

“The OW­TU is con­fi­dent that its com­pa­ny, Pa­tri­ot­ic, stands ready to move to the next stage of ful­ly com­plet­ing the ac­qui­si­tion process in a time­ly man­ner for the ben­e­fit of all cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go,” the union had said in a re­lease at that time.

Pa­tri­ot­ic had hoped to be­gin op­er­a­tions in ear­ly 2020.

In Sep­tem­ber 2020, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said the OW­TU had un­til Oc­to­ber to con­clude ne­go­ti­a­tions at a Spot­light on the Bud­get and Econ­o­my.

On Oc­to­ber 31, 2020, Gov­ern­ment re­ject­ed Pa­tri­ot­ic’s of­fer.

At the time, late en­er­gy min­is­ter Franklin Khan said Pa­tri­ot­ic failed to ad­dress three key is­sues: the first pri­or­i­ty lien on the as­set (the is­sue of pledg­ing of the as­sets); the pur­chase price fi­nanc­ing and the restart fi­nanc­ing.

Fol­low­ing this an­nounce­ment, pres­i­dent gen­er­al of OW­TU, An­cel Ro­get re­quest­ed that the orig­i­nal eval­u­a­tion com­mit­tee, which had analysed the bids in Au­gust and Sep­tem­ber 2019, should be re­con­vened to eval­u­ate Pa­tri­ot­ic’s fi­nal of­fer.

The Prime Min­is­ter ac­qui­es­cenced and di­rect­ed that the com­mit­tee should re-ex­am­ine all Pa­tri­ot­ic’s fi­nal sub­mis­sions and make a rec­om­men­da­tion to Cab­i­net by No­vem­ber 30.

Pa­tri­ot­ic’s fi­nal of­fer was for an up­front pay­ment of US$500 mil­lion for the re­fin­ery and the fu­el trad­ing as­sets. The com­mit­tee con­clud­ed Pa­tri­ot­ic’s re­la­tion­ship with Trafigu­ra to fund the process of restart­ing the re­fin­ery was “work­able,” but the RBC/Pa­tri­ot­ic con­fig­u­ra­tion was not.

Khan said the Eval­u­a­tion Com­mit­tee was of the view that, the fi­nan­cial re­la­tion­ship be­tween Pa­tri­ot­ic and RBC was un­work­able; the fi­nan­cial re­la­tion­ship be­tween Pa­tri­ot­ic and Trafigu­ra was one which could be con­sid­ered work­able; and it was not ad­vis­able or fea­si­ble for Gov­ern­ment to fi­nance the re­moval of the lien on the as­sets of Paria and Guaracara for the pur­pose of fa­cil­i­tat­ing a sale to Pa­tri­ot­ic.

In ad­di­tion, it was not fea­si­ble for the Gov­ern­ment to fund the re­moval of the US$500 mil­lion lien on the re­fin­ery.

The liens (debt) of the as­sets has been the stick­ing point.

There has been no ad­di­tion­al RFP’s is­sued for the re­fin­ery fol­low­ing the re­jec­tion of OW­TU’s bid.

As it stands, the re­fin­ery re­mains moth­balled.