De­clar­ing that Petrotrin is a crit­i­cal pil­lar of the coun­try’s econ­o­my, two for­mer en­er­gy min­is­ters yes­ter­day ad­mit­ted that while some­thing needs to be done to make the com­pa­ny more vi­able, the so­lu­tion is not a shut­down of the com­pa­ny.

Petrotrin’s ten­ta­cles ex­tend far and wide in south Trinidad, im­pact­ing taxi dri­vers, trans­port con­trac­tors, ser­vice com­pa­nies and many small busi­ness­es they said. Kevin Ram­nar­ine said: “Any down­siz­ing of Petrotrin will have to take these re­la­tion­ships in­to con­sid­er­a­tion.”

Both Ram­nar­ine and Car­olyn Seep­re­sad-Bachan con­ced­ed that the cost of op­er­at­ing the com­pa­ny had made it “un­com­pet­i­tive.”

Ram­nar­ine said he be­lieves that a re­duc­tion in the “head­count” of em­ploy­ees is on the cards and while a pri­vate part­ner may be sought, he said it does not mean the coun­try will sur­ren­der con­trol of the fa­cil­i­ty.

“At­tract­ing pri­vate in­vestors does not mean sur­ren­der­ing con­trol, it is pos­si­ble that we can have pri­vate in­vest­ment and main­tain con­trol,” he said, point­ing to the ex­am­ples of Pow­er­gen and Trin­gen.

While the re­fin­ery is los­ing mon­ey, Ram­nar­ine said it can be prof­itable but has had prob­lems with re­li­a­bil­i­ty which re­duces its through­put, which leads to a re­duc­tion of its mar­gins.

He said Petrotrin needs “mon­ey and tech­nol­o­gy to move for­ward,” nei­ther of which will come from “prayer and rhetoric.”

Seep­er­sad-Bachan said she hopes that what­ev­er plan the board and the Cab­i­net have ap­proved does not in­clude the sale of the Trin­mar as­sets, which she de­scribed as the “jew­el of the coun­try.”

“If you sell that you sell a jew­el which has a tremen­dous amount of po­ten­tial,” Seep­er­sad-Bachan said.

She re­called that when she was Min­is­ter of En­er­gy in the pe­ri­od 2010-2011, “my plan was to boost pro­duc­tion in the Trin­mar fields and to im­prove the in­fra­struc­ture in­vest­ments re­quired to up­grade the in­fra­struc­ture and then to car­ry through with an ex­plo­ration plan.”

Seep­er­sad-Bachan not­ed that the more in­dige­nous crude avail­able would have as­sist­ed in im­prov­ing prof­itabil­i­ty. She said Petrotrin had reached this stage “be­cause of years and years of ne­glect.”

She said the is­sue of the bul­let pay­ment of US$850 mil­lion was al­so well known long be­fore the 2010 gen­er­al elec­tion.

“We have been talk­ing about it for years and years. I was aware when I be­came Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and we start­ed putting plans in place to build a re­serve to­wards that bul­let pay­ment.”

She could not say whether there is any­thing in place now. But she said the Gov­ern­ment need­ed to tell the coun­try whether “they plan to post­pone that bul­let pay­ment or re­fi­nance it.”

Seep­er­sad-Bachan said be­fore tak­ing any de­ci­sion on Petrotrin there should have been a na­tion­al con­ver­sa­tion, in­clud­ing in­de­pen­dent ex­perts if nec­es­sary to add clar­i­ty to the is­sue.

While the com­pa­ny may want to look at find­ing an eq­ui­ty fi­nanc­ing part­ner, Seep­er­sad-Bachan said she did not sup­port any plan to “shut down the re­fin­ery with­out fur­ther ex­plor­ing ideas on how to make it prof­itable giv­en the im­pact on the econ­o­my and con­sump­tion of fu­el in Trinidad and To­ba­go and the Caribbean.”

She is of the view that had the Gov­ern­ment “tak­en the nec­es­sary steps we would not have had that black hole” which En­er­gy Min­is­ter Franklin Khan de­scribed it as on the week­end.