There is lit­tle progress to re­port just over a month af­ter a 12-mem­ber com­mit­tee was es­tab­lished to de­vel­op a strat­e­gy for the Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery’s re­ac­ti­va­tion.

The com­mit­tee, head­ed by for­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine, was an­nounced by En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal dur­ing a post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing in Ju­ly.

The En­er­gy Min­is­ter said the com­mit­tee would be tasked with pro­vid­ing a re­port in four months.

When con­tact­ed yes­ter­day con­cern­ing the progress of the com­mit­tee’s work, Ram­nar­ine sim­ply said, “Not yet.”

The Guaracara re­fin­ery was closed in Au­gust 2018 as op­er­a­tions wound down ahead of Petrotrin’s clo­sure in No­vem­ber 2018. The Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union had made mul­ti­ple un­suc­cess­ful bids to pur­chase the re­fin­ery as Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gies, the last of which was re­ject­ed in Jan­u­ary 2021.

In Feb­ru­ary this year, Niger­ian com­pa­ny Oan­do PLC was named by for­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Stu­art Young as the pre­ferred bid­der to lease the Guaracara re­fin­ery in Pointe-a-Pierre, based on a rec­om­men­da­tion by an eval­u­a­tion com­mit­tee.

How­ev­er, Oan­do’s in­volve­ment was put on hold af­ter the April 28 Gen­er­al Elec­tion, which was won by the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress.