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Saturday, July 12, 2025

Kamla's misinformation is an act of treachery- Roget 

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1702 days ago
20201113
 OWTU President General Ancel Roget address members of the media during a press conference held at OWTU Paramount Building, San Fernando yesterday.

OWTU President General Ancel Roget address members of the media during a press conference held at OWTU Paramount Building, San Fernando yesterday.

KRISTIAN DE SILVA

 KEVON FELMINE
kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

As Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gies and Tech­nolo­gies Lim­it­ed en­gages the gov­ern­ment in an­oth­er round of ne­go­ti­a­tion for the ac­qui­si­tion of the Petrotrin re­fin­ery, the Oil­fields Work­ers' Trade Union (OW­TU) says Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar com­mit­ted treach­ery by mis­lead­ing the peo­ple.

OW­TU pres­i­dent gen­er­al An­cel Ro­get said yes­ter­day they would con­tem­plate school­ing Per­sad-Bisses­sar on re­fin­ery op­er­a­tions fol­low­ing her con­tro­ver­sial com­men­tary on the ac­qui­si­tion process dur­ing the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) vir­tu­al meet­ing Mon­day.

He said Per­sad-Bisses­sar is do­ing all she can to pre­vent Pa­tri­ot­ic from ac­quir­ing the re­fin­ery, port and ter­mi­nal as­sets, which would ben­e­fit the small man on the street.

"I want to prof­fer here this af­ter­noon, re­spect­ful­ly, that the ho­n­ourable Leader of the Op­po­si­tion had one thing and one thing on her mind - that was to cause great in­jury and harm, I dare say, and at­tempt to deal a fa­tal blow to the ac­qui­si­tion process and to en­sure that process does not see the light of day," Ro­get said.

The OW­TU called yes­ter­day's me­dia con­fer­ence at its Para­mount Build­ing head­quar­ters in San Fer­nan­do to clar­i­fy three is­sues Per­sad-Bisses­sar raised: the in­clu­sion of Paria in the ac­qui­si­tion of the re­fin­ery, Pa­tri­ot­ic's part­ner­ship with in­ter­na­tion­al pe­tro­le­um trad­er Trafigu­ra PTE and the price of the re­fin­ery.

When the gov­ern­ment shut­down Petrotrin in 2018, it placed the re­fin­ery in­to Garacara and the stor­age and port as­sets in­to Paria; two re­cent­ly in­cor­po­rat­ed com­pa­nies. On Mon­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said that the gov­ern­ment was not on­ly sell­ing Garacara but Paria as well, al­though it made no men­tion that it would sell the lat­ter. She re­called that in March 2019, for­mer Petrotrin chair­man Wil­fred Es­pinet said Paria was on of­fer, and the com­pa­ny ad­ver­tised an RFP for its sale. Two days lat­er, Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries Franklin Khan said it was an er­ror and or­dered a re­trac­tion. She al­so re­called that days lat­er, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said that the gov­ern­ment was yet to de­cide on the sale of Paria.

How­ev­er, dur­ing that post Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing, Row­ley clar­i­fied that while the gov­ern­ment did not de­cide at the time, Paria was part of the re­struc­tur­ing of Petrotrin.

"If the re­struc­tur­ing is go­ing to be a restart-up of the re­fin­ery and it in­volves any in­put for Paria, we would be crazy to have the re­fin­ery die when it could live be­cause of Paria,” Row­ley said.

Ro­get said that with his knowl­edge of re­fin­ery op­er­a­tions, a re­fin­ery, stor­age and port fa­cil­i­ties go hand in hand for a suc­cess­ful process. He said when Shell and Tex­a­co op­er­at­ed Trinidad's oil in­dus­try, they knew this and built the nec­es­sary in­fra­struc­ture.

"In our re­sponse to the RFP and to put in a bid, it had to have been for re­fin­ery and port fa­cil­i­ties for it to make any sense. More than that, for it to make any eco­nom­i­cal and op­er­a­tional sense for it to ben­e­fit the com­pa­ny and for it to ben­e­fit Trinidad & To­ba­go. There­fore, it is a mat­ter of pub­lic record that we would have placed a bid for the re­fin­ery and the port,' Ro­get said. He said the UNC was in the Par­lia­ment and the Hansard con­tains the in­for­ma­tion that the Pa­tri­ot­ic sub­mit­ted a big for the port and re­fin­ing as­sets.

"It is a grave in­jus­tice, in­deed it is an act of treach­ery for some­one who has the knowl­edge to the con­trary to ped­al to those who they think do not know this in­for­ma­tion be­cause it is pub­lic knowl­edge, it was an­nounced in the Par­lia­ment. The ho­n­ourable Leader of the Op­po­si­tion was present when it was an­nounced. Check the Hansard."
Re­gard­ing the price, Per­sad-Bisses­sar not­ed that Pa­tri­ot­ic ini­tial­ly or­dered US$700 mil­lion for the re­fin­ery and US$300 mil­lion for non-core as­sets while there was no price for Paria. She said Pa­tri­ot­ic now wants to pay $US526 mil­lion for the re­fin­ery: $US500 in ad­vance and wants the gov­ern­ment to foot a US$26 mil­lion bill for oth­er fees.
But Ro­get said Per­sad-Bisses­sar need­ed to un­der­stand Net Present Val­ue, es­pe­cial­ly as the as­sets were out of com­mis­sion for al­most two years. He said that in­stead of the ini­tial arrange­ment of pay­ing over 13 years (A three-year mora­to­ri­um and sev­en years of pay­ments), there is an of­fer of up­front pay­ment on the ta­ble.
"I think we should school the Ho­n­ourable Op­po­si­tion Leader and mem­bers of the Op­po­si­tion on re­fin­ery op­er­a­tions. You can­not take off a re­fin­ery, some 23 plants, leave it off for two years and start it up just like that. It takes a lot of cap­i­tal."
Ro­get said a re­fin­ery needs a vi­able mar­ket and feed­stock for sus­tain­abil­i­ty. He said the Op­po­si­tion could not ex­pect the Pa­tri­ot­ic to pay more, es­pe­cial­ly in a COVID-19 pe­ri­od when com­mod­i­ty prices are down.
He al­so re­spond­ed to Per­sad-Bisses­sar's as­ser­tion that Trafigu­ra PTE was a trou­bled com­pa­ny. Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the com­pa­ny is sub­ject­ed to in­ves­ti­ga­tions re­lat­ing to cor­rup­tion, mar­ket ma­nip­u­la­tion.
How­ev­er, Ro­get read from a T&T Ex­trac­tive In­dus­tries Trans­paren­cy Ini­tia­tive re­port. It stat­ed that the Trafigu­ra Group, a lead­ing en­er­gy com­mod­i­ty trad­er start­ed to pub­licly dis­close what it paid to State-owned En­ter­pris­es such as Petrotrin and the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) for their car­goes.
In 2014, it paid Petrotrin US$80.7 mil­lion for re­fined prod­ucts and US$105.5 mil­lion to NGC for gas. While the re­ports give the fig­ures for 2014 to 2017, Ro­get fo­cused on 2014 as he said the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship was in pow­er and Per­sad-Bisses­sar, as then prime min­is­ter or her en­er­gy min­is­ter ought to know that Trafigu­ra PTE was a sig­nif­i­cant rev­enue stream for the coun­try.
Ro­get said Trafigu­ra PTE, like many oth­er multi­na­tion­al com­pa­nies (MNC), would run in­to prob­lems in the coun­tries it op­er­ates. He said there are is­sues with many oth­er MNCs in Trinidad as they tend to seek out the most they can get from a coun­try.
Pa­tri­ot­ic met with an eval­u­a­tion com­mit­tee con­vened by Row­ley yes­ter­day to present clar­i­fi­ca­tion on sev­er­al is­sues raised dur­ing a pre­vi­ous meet­ing on last Fri­day. Ro­get said that giv­en the com­po­si­tion of this com­mit­tee, he is con­fi­dent Pa­tri­ot­ic can set­tle the ne­go­ti­a­tion and can restart the re­fin­ery soon.

 

 


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