Renu­ka Singh

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley is dis­miss­ing all calls from the Op­po­si­tion that he re­sign over the col­lapse of the Petrotrin re­fin­ery sale to Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gies and Tech­nolo­gies Com­pa­ny Ltd.

This is be­cause it was Pa­tri­otric who failed to meet the “busi­ness mile­stones” which need­ed to be met to ful­fill its end of the deal.

In a brief ex­change with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, fol­low­ing the Gov­ern­ment’s an­nounce­ment that Pa­tri­ot­ic’s lat­est bid had been re­ject­ed, the Prime Min­is­ter ques­tioned Op­po­si­tion leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s stand­ing to even make such a call.

“What’s she drink­ing these days?” Row­ley asked.

“Must be the new brand I heard of, Its called IL­LOG­I­CAL by Des­per­a­tion.”

He added, “So a buy­er can’t find the mon­ey to pay for some­thing that is to be pur­chased, there­fore, I ( rep­re­sent­ing the sell­er), must re­sign.

“You know what that “log­ic” is say­ing? It can on­ly be say­ing that the Gov­ern­ment should have con­clud­ed the sale even though the buy­er can’t pay for the item.”

The Prime Min­is­ter said that had the Gov­ern­ment done that, “this same ir­rel­e­vant woman would have been out front, lead­ing the charge, as the Gov­ern­ment was be­ing ac­cused of be­ing ir­re­spon­si­ble.”

“In fact, even as Pa­tri­ot­ic was the on­ly (out of 73 ini­tial­ly in­ter­est­ed par­ties) one who of­fered cash to pur­chase the re­fin­ery, even as Gov­ern­ment ac­cept­ed that of­fer price, so ef­fec­tive­ly set by the open mar­ket pro­cure­ment process, this same ir­rel­e­vant woman screeched that we were giv­ing away the “crown jew­el” which, ac­cord­ing to her, “is worth bil­lions.” How she ar­rived at that con­clu­sion, on­ly she and her han­dlers know,” Row­ley said.

He said it was iron­ic now for the Op­po­si­tion to be so aghast at the col­lapse of the deal, when they nev­er want­ed the re­fin­ery sold to Pa­tri­ot­ic in the first place.

“How­ev­er, they went on to state open­ly that they op­pose the at­tempt­ed sale and they would stop it. So what in God’s name are they com­plain­ing about now?” Row­ley asked.

Rather, he said the sale falling apart should please the Op­po­si­tion.

“It did not hap­pen, so all their fool­ish and un­der­min­ing con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries (about Gov­ern­ment be­ing in bed with Ro­get) have now been shown to have and nev­er had any mer­it,” the PM said.

The Prime Min­is­ter said at least his Gov­ern­ment had tried to get some­thing done.

“It was un­suc­cess­ful and dis­ap­point­ing for both buy­er (Pa­tri­ot­ic) and sell­er (Gov­ern­ment) but cer­tain busi­ness mile­stones just have to be met,” he said.

Row­ley said that the re­struc­tur­ing of Petrotrin “was a huge moun­tain to climb.” 

“With prof­itable Her­itage and Paria, we have done so suc­cess­ful­ly and we will con­tin­ue with the same good sense, zeal and re­solve as we strive to get the best for all the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go. It’s our du­ty and we have bound­less faith in our des­tiny,” he said.

On No­vem­ber 30, 2018 Petrotrin was shut­tered and the com­pa­ny sep­a­rat­ed in­to three en­ti­ties - Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um, Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny and Guaracara, which housed the re­fin­ery- un­der an um­brel­la hold­ing com­pa­ny.

For­mer Petrotrin pres­i­dent Wil­fred Es­pinet presided over that shut­down and yes­ter­day said while he had no in­volve­ment in the sale deal, his “sense from pub­lic re­ac­tion was that the deal was not cred­i­ble.”

“I as­sume that the con­clu­sion sup­ports this,” Es­pinet told Guardian Me­dia.

Mean­while, for­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine ques­tioned how Pa­tri­ot­ic got as far as it did if it did not have the fi­nan­cial where­with­al to com­plete the sale.

“It is clear that they did not have the mon­ey need­ed. The Min­is­ter of Fi­nance was very clear in ex­plain­ing that. It’s al­so clear that the RBC let­ter was in­suf­fi­cient and was more a let­ter of in­tent rather than a let­ter of cred­it or a guar­an­tee,” Ram­nar­ine said.

“Giv­en that they could not demon­strate they had the fund­ing, the eval­u­a­tion com­mit­tee had no choice but to rec­om­mend the re­jec­tion of the pro­pos­al.

“It’s un­for­tu­nate that the coun­try has wast­ed 14 months on this and while we wast­ed that time, the re­fin­ery con­tin­ues to de­pre­ci­ate.”

Ram­nar­ine said that in terms of go­ing back out to mar­ket, he is strug­gling to see how the coun­try would at­tract “se­ri­ous com­pa­nies with the deep pock­ets need­ed to ac­quire and restart the re­fin­ery.”  

“The world of 2021 is not the world of 2019. In the last 12 months, 17 re­finer­ies have closed down or are close to clos­ing down. In this en­vi­ron­ment of COVID-19, there is less de­mand for jet fu­el, gaso­line, diesel and bunker fu­el et cetera. So it’s bad time to sell a re­fin­ery,” Ram­nar­ine said.

But all is not lost, ac­cord­ing to Ram­nar­ine.

“Things can, how­ev­er, change as the world econ­o­my re­cov­ers and de­mand for trans­port fu­els re­bounds. There is an op­por­tu­ni­ty that is pre­sent­ing it­self down the road giv­en the loss of re­fin­ing ca­pac­i­ty in Venezuela, Cu­ra­cao and Aru­ba. There is room for a re­fin­ery in the Caribbean but that op­por­tu­ni­ty is not in 2021 but maybe 2022 or 2023,” he said.