Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has giv­en a new man­date that all re­views of pro­pos­als for the Petrotrin Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery be com­plet­ed by No­vem­ber 30.

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Franklin Khan said a Cab­i­net-ap­point­ed Eval­u­a­tion Com­mit­tee had been re­con­sti­tut­ed to pe­ruse all pro­pos­als.

“On the in­struc­tion of the Prime Min­is­ter, the Eval­u­a­tion Com­mit­tee ap­point­ed by the Cab­i­net to eval­u­ate the Re­quest for Pro­pos­als (RFP) for the use of the Guaracara Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery, is re­quired to ex­am­ine the largest po­si­tion of the ne­go­ti­at­ing par­ties as they stood at the es­tab­lished dead­line of Oc­to­ber 31,” Khan said.

“This ex­am­i­na­tion and any sub­se­quent rec­om­men­da­tions de­riv­ing there­from will be sep­a­rate and apart from the work and de­ter­mi­na­tion of the Cab­i­net Sub-Com­mit­tee, which has al­so re­ceived the sub­mis­sions.”

The state­ment not­ed that “the com­ments and rec­om­men­da­tions of the re­con­sti­tut­ed Eval­u­a­tion Com­mit­tee will be sub­mit­ted di­rect­ly to Cab­i­net. This ex­er­cise of re­view and clar­i­fi­ca­tion is to be com­plet­ed and sub­mit­ted to Cab­i­net by No­vem­ber 30th 2020. The Com­mit­tee is re­quired to ex­am­ine the largest po­si­tion of the ne­go­ti­at­ing par­ties as they stood at the es­tab­lished dead­line of Oc­to­ber 31.” 

Khan not­ed that the com­ments and rec­om­men­da­tions of the re­con­sti­tut­ed Eval­u­a­tion Com­mit­tee will be sub­mit­ted di­rect­ly to Cab­i­net. 

Row­ley’s in­ter­ven­tion came fol­low­ing a re­quest by Oil­field Work­ers’ Trade Union pres­i­dent-gen­er­al An­cel Ro­get for Gov­ern­ment to al­low the Pa­tri­ot­ic pro­pos­al to be in­de­pen­dent­ly eval­u­at­ed again by the Cab­i­net-ap­point­ed eval­u­a­tion com­mit­tee that ini­tial­ly re­viewed the sub­mis­sions to the ten-point con­di­tion (for the sale of the re­fin­ery) set out by the Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert.

Ro­get said he felt this was nec­es­sary be­cause the min­is­te­r­i­al team which re­ject­ed their lat­est pro­pos­al did not give them­selves time to prop­er­ly re­view the com­plex doc­u­ment.