KEVON FELMINE

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

While Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries Stu­art Young con­tin­ued to de­fend the shut­down of Petrotrin, say­ing it spent US$650 mil­lion per year on crude oil im­ports for re­fin­ing op­er­a­tions, the Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Co Ltd paid over US$3.5 bil­lion to pur­chase fu­el be­tween 2018 and 2021.

Doc­u­ments ob­tained through the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act (FoIA) by the Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU) showed Paria spent an av­er­age of US$1.16 bil­lion per an­num on fu­el im­ports.

Paria said it is en­gaged in pur­chas­ing re­fined prod­ucts: gaso­line, diesel, jet fu­el and bunker fu­el to sup­ply to lo­cal and re­gion­al cus­tomers and its bunker­ing op­er­a­tions.

It is more than what Petrotrin spent on im­port­ing crude to pro­duce prod­ucts it sold on the lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets.

Dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence at the OW­TU Para­mount Build­ing head­quar­ters in San Fer­nan­do yes­ter­day, Pres­i­dent Gen­er­al An­cel Ro­get said the union had to de­bunk the mis­in­for­ma­tion Young ped­dled to the na­tion.

Young spoke about the Petrotrin is­sue dur­ing a de­bate to adopt the re­port of the Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee in Par­lia­ment last Mon­day. 

Ro­get said even Petrotrin’s pre­de­ces­sors, Tex­a­co and Trin­toc, im­port­ed crude be­cause T&T did not have the va­ri­ety need­ed for re­fin­ing.

“They do not want you to make the con­nec­tion with their bad en­er­gy pol­i­cy, their bad eco­nom­ic pol­i­cy. They do not want the cit­i­zens to make the con­nec­tion that if Petrotrin was in op­er­a­tion to­day, we would not have had to car­ry the ad­di­tion­al bur­den of pay­ing more for fu­el, gaso­line, kerosene and su­per gaso­line,” Ro­get said.

In 2018, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said in­stead of be­ing a  con­trib­u­tor, Petrotrin was a ward of the trea­sury.

How­ev­er, in­for­ma­tion from the Min­istry of Fi­nance (MoF), through a FoIA re­quest by the Fish­er­men and Friends of the Sea, shows that Petrotrin re­ceived no sub­ven­tions be­tween 2014 and 2017.

The on­ly time the MoF forked out mon­ey was in 2019 when it spent $1.2 bil­lion on clos­ing/re­struc­tur­ing the com­pa­ny.

The Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries (MEEI) spent $169 mil­lion to ser­vice the in­ter­est on a $200 mil­lion loan fa­cil­i­ty in­ter­est for the late pay­ment of a loan caused by the shut­down.

Al­though the Lash­ley Re­port in­di­cat­ed that Petrotrin was in se­vere debt, Ro­get said it nev­er missed a loan pay­ment. The com­pa­ny al­so had a bul­let pay­ment due Au­gust 19, which he said re­mained un­paid.

He said it was one of the rea­sons ne­go­ti­a­tions be­tween the Gov­ern­ment and Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gies and Tech­nolo­gies Co Ltd over the sale of the Pointe-a-Pierre Re­fin­ery broke down.

Ro­get said the Gov­ern­ment does not want peo­ple to link the clo­sure of Petrotrin to the hard­ships cit­i­zens face now. Af­ter com­ing out of the eco­nom­ic-re­strict­ing por­tion of the pan­dem­ic, where many peo­ple be­came un­em­ployed, he said the Gov­ern­ment un­leashed high­er fu­el prices at the pumps and soon prop­er­ty tax.

He said cit­i­zens and small busi­ness­es al­so strug­gled to get for­eign ex­change. 

The OW­TU al­so ac­cused Young of be­ing disin­gen­u­ous over his in­ter­view on CNN’s Quest on Busi­ness last week. Young said T&T was a sig­nif­i­cant nat­ur­al gas and Liqui­fied Nat­ur­al Gas (LNG) pro­duc­er for decades, pump­ing out about 770 mil­lion MMB­tu of LNG an­nu­al­ly dur­ing a pro­duc­tion high.

With the war be­tween Rus­sia and Ukraine pro­vid­ing an op­por­tu­ni­ty, Young said the onus was on oth­er oil and gas coun­tries like T&T to ramp up pro­duc­tion and pro­vide an al­ter­na­tive to Rus­sia dur­ing this cri­sis.

“We have four trains, and so we see the abil­i­ty to have ad­di­tion­al ca­pac­i­ty right now,” said Young.

But Ro­get said Young was disin­gen­u­ous as At­lantic’s Train One has been out of op­er­a­tion for a while, and the com­pa­ny will prob­a­bly moth­ball the fa­cil­i­ty. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, MEEI da­ta shows nat­ur­al gas, oil and LNG pro­duc­tion has de­creased an­nu­al­ly since 2016.

“We are pro­duc­ing less gas and less oil as a re­sult of less ac­tiv­i­ty in that sec­tor. Ob­vi­ous­ly. That fall or less or re­duced ac­tiv­i­ty is dri­ven by gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy, or lack there­of or bad gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy. Be­cause of bad gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy, you have a di­rect cor­re­la­tion with nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion, and, of course, a de­cline in crude oil pro­duc­tion. That is the Min­istry’s fig­ures.”

Young al­so said the Gov­ern­ment would use most of the in­creased rev­enue from surg­ing en­er­gy prices to pay out­stand­ing bills. Ro­get said its most crit­i­cal bill is the one owed to work­ers. He said while many suf­fered from the clo­sure of Petrotrin, con­trac­tors ben­e­fit­ed, as Paria re­vealed that it paid Ken­son Op­er­a­tional Ser­vices Ltd, found­ed by for­mer San Fer­nan­do May­or Ken­neth Fer­gu­son, al­most $127 mil­lion for tech­ni­cal and hu­man re­sources ser­vices.

Trin­i­ty Lift­boat Ser­vices Ltd col­lect­ed an es­ti­mat­ed $162 mil­lion.

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