An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal de­scribes the restart of the Pointe-à-Pierre re­fin­ery as a cen­tral part of the Gov­ern­ment’s in­ter­na­tion­al en­er­gy strat­e­gy, with dis­cus­sions now un­der­way with In­di­an en­er­gy com­pa­nies as T&T seeks part­ners to bring the fa­cil­i­ty back in­to op­er­a­tion.

The re­fin­ery was closed on No­vem­ber 30, 2018.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day while still in In­dia, Mooni­lal said the re­fin­ery fea­tured promi­nent­ly dur­ing en­gage­ments at In­dia En­er­gy Week, which con­clud­ed on Fri­day.

“We have had dis­cus­sions with sev­er­al ma­jor oil and gas com­pa­nies, you know, the part­ner­ship, build­ing glob­al part­ner­ships in the en­er­gy sec­tor, of which one dis­cus­sion, of course, was the re­fin­ery is­sue,” Mooni­lal said. “But that was one of sev­er­al is­sues raised, in­clud­ing at­tract­ing for­eign in­vest­ment for sev­er­al blocks, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the deep and ul­tra-deep wa­ters, and, of course, in­vest­ment in our on­shore re­sources.”

Mooni­lal led a T&T del­e­ga­tion last Thurs­day in a se­ries of bi­lat­er­al meet­ings and an ex­hi­bi­tion tour with a wide cross-sec­tion of in­ter­na­tion­al en­er­gy com­pa­nies. The del­e­ga­tion in­clud­ed Kurt Ram­lal, Chair­man of Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed; Gow­tam Ma­haraj, Chair­man of Guaracara Re­fin­ing Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed; and Ter­rance Ali, Se­nior Chem­i­cal En­gi­neer (Ag.) at the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries.

Among the com­pa­nies en­gaged were Re­liance In­dus­tries Lim­it­ed, Exxon­Mo­bil, Shell, To­tal­En­er­gies, and KBC En­gi­neer­ing. The min­is­ter stat­ed that the talks cen­tred on po­si­tion­ing T&T as an in­vest­ment-ready ju­ris­dic­tion, while ad­vanc­ing plans to restart the Pointe-à-Pierre re­fin­ery.

Dur­ing the meet­ings, the del­e­ga­tion out­lined the coun­try’s up­stream po­ten­tial and the Gov­ern­ment’s in­tent to at­tract cap­i­tal for re­fin­ery op­er­a­tions, off­shore ex­plo­ration — in­clud­ing deep and ul­tra-deep wa­ter blocks, and on­shore de­vel­op­ment. In­di­an com­pa­nies were among those ap­proached as the Gov­ern­ment widened its net for re­fin­ery part­ners.

Mean­while, Mooni­lal did not re­spond to claims cir­cu­lat­ing on so­cial me­dia which sug­gest­ed that he had lost re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for re­new­able en­er­gy and cross-bor­der gas fol­low­ing a re­align­ment of min­is­te­r­i­al port­fo­lios.

Guardian Me­dia was re­li­ably in­formed that cross-bor­der gas re­spon­si­bil­i­ty was as­signed to the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al late last week.

How­ev­er, Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Bar­ry Padarath said months ago, when port­fo­lios were re­aligned by the Prime Min­is­ter, sev­er­al agen­cies pre­vi­ous­ly un­der the Min­istry of En­er­gy were re­as­signed to Pub­lic Util­i­ties.

“At that time, the Ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter thought it was best to align the pow­er gen­er­a­tion com­pa­nies with T&TEC, and there­fore that was the thrust be­hind it to en­sure that all the pow­er gen­er­at­ing com­pa­nies, in­clud­ing civ­il re­new­able en­er­gy, fall un­der the purview of the line Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties,” Padarath said.

He added that he was not aware of any trans­fer of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for cross-bor­der gas to the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al.