KEVON FELMINE

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gies and Tech­nolo­gies Co. Ltd took an­oth­er step to­ward ac­quir­ing the Guaracara Re­fin­ing Com­pa­ny and the Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny on Mon­day when it pre­sent­ed its re­sponse to re­quire­ments giv­en by the eval­u­a­tion com­mit­tee over­see­ing the sale.

In a re­lease yes­ter­day, Pa­tri­ot­ic's own­er the Oil­fields Work­ers' Trade Union (OW­TU) said the en­tire Pa­tri­ot­ic team/con­sor­tium met with the com­mit­tee and de­liv­ered on all the re­quire­ments, thus meet­ing its dead­line.
"In this re­gard, the union now awaits a re­sponse from the eval­u­a­tion com­mit­tee on or be­fore the end of the month. 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 said.
Pa­tri­ot­ic hopes to be­gin an over­haul of the oil as­sets be­fore the year ends so that op­er­a­tions can be­gin in ear­ly 2020.
The ac­qui­si­tion fol­lows Gov­ern­ment's clo­sure of Petrotrin in No­vem­ber 2018 and ter­mi­na­tion of 4700 staff. This was fol­lowed by protest and le­gal ac­tion by the OW­TU. When all failed, the union in­cor­po­rat­ed Pa­tri­ot­ic to bid for the Pointe-a-Pierre Re­fin­ery, stor­age, pro­cess­ing and port fa­cil­i­ties.
On Sep­tem­ber 20, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert an­nounced in Par­lia­ment that Pa­tri­ot­ic was the pre­ferred bid­der, beat­ing off its in­ter­na­tion­al com­peti­tors.
Two weeks ago, for­mer UNC sen­a­tors Wayne Sturge and Ger­ald Ramdeen ap­plied an in­junc­tion to stop the sale of the re­fin­ery, pend­ing the out­come of a ju­di­cial re­view. The law­suit was filed to de­ter­mine whether the chair­man of the Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee on En­er­gy Colm Im­bert had act­ed im­prop­er­ly by not con­ven­ing a meet­ing where the sale of the State's as­set could be scru­ti­nised. How­ev­er, the ap­pli­ca­tion was with­drawn when Im­bert sched­uled a meet­ing. How­ev­er, the court is still be­ing asked to re­view Im­bert's con­duct.