DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal says rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the In­di­an Oil Cor­po­ra­tion (IOC) are ex­pect­ed to vis­it Trinidad and To­ba­go af­ter the Car­ni­val sea­son to pro­vide tech­ni­cal ad­vice on restart­ing the Pointe-a-Pierre Re­fin­ery.

The re­fin­ery, for­mer­ly op­er­at­ed by Petrotrin, was moth­balled in No­vem­ber 2018 as part of a re­struc­tur­ing ex­er­cise.

Mooni­lal yes­ter­day said the de­ci­sion for IOC to vis­it was agreed to in prin­ci­ple dur­ing the In­dia En­er­gy Week in Goa from Jan­u­ary 27-30. He led T&T’s del­e­ga­tion to the con­fer­ence, where dis­cus­sions fo­cused heav­i­ly on the fu­ture of re­fin­ing at Pointe-a-Pierre.

Be­yond long-stand­ing part­ners BP and Shell, Mooni­lal said the del­e­ga­tion held talks with sev­er­al in­ter­na­tion­al com­pa­nies on the prospects for restart­ing the re­fin­ery. Among them was the IOC. He de­scribed IOC as In­dia’s largest state-owned in­te­grat­ed en­er­gy com­pa­ny, op­er­at­ing across the hy­dro­car­bon val­ue chain with ten re­finer­ies in op­er­a­tion.

“They have a wealth of ex­pe­ri­ence in re­fin­ery ca­pac­i­ty at var­i­ous re­finer­ies across Asia. The del­e­ga­tion in­di­cat­ed that there is a read­i­ly avail­able lo­cal work­force to sup­port the re­sump­tion of re­fin­ing op­er­a­tions,” Mooni­lal said at yes­ter­day’s post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, Port-of-Spain

Mooni­lal said sub­stan­tive en­gage­ment is ex­pect­ed to be­gin short­ly af­ter the Car­ni­val sea­son ends.

“As every­one knows, these cou­ple weeks here will be pre­oc­cu­pied with lime and oth­er ac­tiv­i­ties, so that we’ll not look at this time but cer­tain­ly post-Car­ni­val, in­to March, we’re ex­pect­ing that In­di­an Oil and oth­er part­ners, of course, not just that com­pa­ny, would be in the re­gion. Once they are here, they will at­tend on us and look at the op­er­a­tions, look at the in­stal­la­tions.”

He stressed that IOC has not ex­pressed any in­ter­est in ac­quir­ing the re­fin­ery.

“The is­sue of bid­ding or leas­ing or sell­ing doesn’t arise at this time. What we can say is that we are in talks with en­ti­ties, par­tic­u­lar­ly those with sig­nif­i­cant ex­pe­ri­ence in re­fin­ing, to as­sist us in the restart. If we can get the as­sis­tance in restart­ing, it in­cludes, of course, tech­ni­cal ex­per­tise, enor­mous com­pre­hen­sive, in­ter­na­tion­al­ly rep­utable firms to do tech­ni­cal and health and safe­ty analy­sis and so on, equip­ment as­set in­tegri­ty re­ports and so on. If we can get that type of sup­port, then the next phase, of course, is fi­nan­cial re­struc­tur­ing and what op­tions are avail­able to the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

Mooni­lal re­called that in Au­gust last year, the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress ad­min­is­tra­tion re­ceived cor­re­spon­dence from the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion in­di­cat­ing that process­es un­der­tak­en by the pre­vi­ous Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment ad­min­is­tra­tion in re­la­tion to a re­fin­ery restart were not aligned with OPR leg­is­la­tion. He said there were pro­ce­dur­al flaws which ren­dered the process im­prop­er. How­ev­er, he said or­gan­i­sa­tions which ex­pressed in­ter­est are still be­ing con­sid­ered.

“Those play­ers who have ex­pressed an in­ter­est al­ready, they are on the ta­ble, of course. They are still on the ta­ble. But we are in a sit­u­a­tion where we are dis­cussing with in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners, and those with great ex­pe­ri­ence, how we can get to­geth­er.”

Com­pa­nies that had pre­vi­ous­ly ex­pressed in­ter­est in the Pointe-a-Pierre Re­fin­ery in­clude Oan­do PLC, Be­owulf En­er­gy, and the Oil­field Work­ers’ Trade Union-backed Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gies.

Al­though the re­fin­ery has been closed for sev­en years, Mooni­lal said a restart as­sess­ment re­port in­di­cat­ed that re­sump­tion of op­er­a­tions is pos­si­ble, but would re­quire sig­nif­i­cant work and in­vest­ment.

Dur­ing the In­dia vis­it, T&T’s del­e­ga­tion al­so met with Re­liance In­dus­tries Lim­it­ed, which op­er­ates the world’s largest sin­gle-site re­fin­ery com­plex in Gu­jarat, In­dia. Mooni­lal said Re­liance is al­so be­ing en­gaged to par­tic­i­pate in the re­fin­ery restart process.

The del­e­ga­tion al­so held talks with Exxon­Mo­bil and To­tal­En­er­gies. He not­ed that while To­tal­En­er­gies cur­rent­ly has no ma­jor op­er­a­tions in T&T, it is ac­tive in Suri­name and has shown in­ter­est in ex­pand­ing its Caribbean foot­print.

He de­scribed the In­dia En­er­gy Week con­fer­ence as a ma­jor suc­cess. He said dis­cus­sions cen­tred on ris­ing glob­al en­er­gy de­mand and T&T’s po­ten­tial role in meet­ing that de­mand, with re­peat­ed em­pha­sis on the coun­try’s po­si­tion as a re­gion­al en­er­gy hub.

“Dur­ing the en­tire week and par­tic­u­lar­ly dur­ing pan­el dis­cus­sions, the pan­el­lists and par­tic­u­lar­ly rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the new emerg­ing en­er­gy economies looked to­wards Trinidad and To­ba­go for lead­er­ship, they looked to­wards us for guid­ance and had enor­mous re­spect for our great his­to­ry as an oil pro­duc­er and an en­er­gy econ­o­my.”

Mooni­lal said the del­e­ga­tion pro­mot­ed Trinidad and To­ba­go’s new­ly in­tro­duced en­er­gy ac­cel­er­a­tor hub as a mech­a­nism to at­tract in­vest­ment, along­side the coun­try’s po­lit­i­cal sta­bil­i­ty, skilled work­force and fis­cal regime.

He said he re­as­sured in­ter­na­tion­al in­vestors that Gov­ern­ment is pre­pared to in­tro­duce in­no­v­a­tive in­cen­tives for multi­na­tion­al com­pa­nies, while en­sur­ing fair re­turns to the state.

The del­e­ga­tion al­so met en­gi­neer­ing firms from Hous­ton which ser­vice Gulf Coast re­finer­ies, many of which ex­pressed in­ter­est in op­por­tu­ni­ties in T&T. Mooni­lal said dis­cus­sions al­so high­light­ed the coun­try’s up­stream po­ten­tial and Gov­ern­ment plans to ex­pand ex­plo­ration in deep and ul­tra-deep ma­rine ar­eas.

“All of the in­ter­na­tion­al oil and gas ma­jors ex­pressed the view that they were very pleased that Exxon­Mo­bil an­nounced to the world that Trinidad and To­ba­go is now the gold stan­dard in terms of do­ing busi­ness quick­ly and pro­ceed­ing with pace to move quick­ly through ne­go­ti­a­tions to sign­ing con­tracts and agree­ments.”

Mooni­lal al­so con­firmed that T&T has been in­vit­ed to at­tend the Guyana En­er­gy Con­fer­ence from Feb­ru­ary 17-20 but said de­tails on the del­e­ga­tion are yet to be fi­nalised. He al­so said the Caribbean En­er­gy Week 2026 is sched­uled for March 30-April 1 in Suri­name, but said it was not yet clear whether he or the prime min­is­ter would at­tend.