RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gies Ser­vices Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed has se­cured three ISO cer­ti­fi­ca­tions and is hope­ful the Gov­ern­ment will grant ap­proval for its part­ner, Maire Tec­n­i­mont, to un­der­take a US$50 mil­lion in­spec­tion study of the shut­tered Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery.

Speak­ing at a me­dia brief­ing, Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU) pres­i­dent gen­er­al and Pa­tri­ot­ic share­hold­er An­cel Ro­get said the com­pa­ny is con­fi­dent the State will ad­here to pro­cure­ment laws in de­ter­min­ing the best path for­ward for restart­ing the re­fin­ery, which has been closed since 2018.

Ro­get said Pa­tri­ot­ic is tar­get­ing a phased restart with­in nine to 12 months once ap­provals are grant­ed, with full op­er­a­tions po­ten­tial­ly fol­low­ing with­in an­oth­er year.

“We are cer­tain that by what we have done and what we are com­mit­ted to con­tin­ue do­ing, we will pos­i­tive­ly im­pact the lives of peo­ple in this coun­try,” Ro­get said, adding that the ini­tia­tive goes be­yond the OW­TU and aims to re­turn up to 4,000 cit­i­zens to work while re­vi­tal­is­ing sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ties.

He stressed that every com­po­nent of the re­fin­ery must un­der­go rig­or­ous in­spec­tion be­fore any restart.

Un­der the pro­posed arrange­ment, Ro­get clar­i­fied that nei­ther Gov­ern­ment nor Pa­tri­ot­ic would fund the US$50 mil­lion in­spec­tion. In­stead, fi­nanc­ing will be se­cured by Tec­n­i­mont, an Ital­ian en­gi­neer­ing, pro­cure­ment and con­struc­tion (EPC) con­trac­tor with in­ter­na­tion­al ex­pe­ri­ence in re­fin­ery re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion.

Ro­get said Pa­tri­ot­ic is hope­ful Tec­n­i­mont will ul­ti­mate­ly se­cure the bid to car­ry out the up­grade works re­quired for the re­fin­ery’s full restart, not­ing that the com­pa­ny has al­ready ex­pressed con­fi­dence in the tech­ni­cal com­pe­tence of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s re­fin­ery work­ers.

The re­fin­ery, once op­er­at­ed by Petrotrin, was closed in 2018 un­der the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion, re­sult­ing in thou­sands of job loss­es and a sig­nif­i­cant de­cline in do­mes­tic fu­el pro­duc­tion. Since then, T&T has re­lied heav­i­ly on im­port­ed fu­el, with crit­ics ar­gu­ing the shut­down wors­ened for­eign ex­change chal­lenges and eco­nom­ic strain in south Trinidad.

Ro­get main­tained that restart­ing the re­fin­ery would bring wide-rang­ing ben­e­fits, in­clud­ing em­ploy­ment for up to 4,000 work­ers at peak con­struc­tion and re­fur­bish­ment stages, as well as long-term en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty.

Glob­al Com­pli­ance Ser­vice CEO David Pope said the award­ing of ISO 9001, 14001 and 45001 cer­ti­fi­ca­tions demon­strate that Pa­tri­ot­ic has tech­ni­cal ca­pa­bil­i­ty and hu­man re­sources to meet glob­al stan­dards.

Ro­get al­so pushed back against crit­ics of the re­fin­ery restart plan, in­sist­ing that Pa­tri­ot­ic has the ex­pe­ri­ence, work­force and re­silience to de­liv­er a safe and vi­able op­er­a­tion.

He said the pro­pos­al sub­mit­ted to Gov­ern­ment re­quires no sov­er­eign guar­an­tee and stands on its own fi­nan­cial and tech­ni­cal mer­its.

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal has pre­vi­ous­ly con­firmed that no ap­proval has yet been grant­ed to Tec­n­i­mont or any oth­er bid­der, not­ing that sev­er­al pro­pos­als re­main un­der re­view as the Gov­ern­ment weighs op­tions for the re­fin­ery’s fu­ture.

Ro­get ac­knowl­edged this, stress­ing that the cur­rent arrange­ment is be­tween Pa­tri­ot­ic and Tec­n­i­mont, not the Gov­ern­ment.

“What we have is a pro­pos­al,” he said. “If giv­en the green light, they are pre­pared to put their mon­ey where their mouth is.”

He added that the ul­ti­mate goal is not just to restart the re­fin­ery, but to en­sure it op­er­ates safe­ly and sus­tain­ably over its full lifes­pan, de­liv­er­ing eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits for gen­er­a­tions to come.