They fought long and hard to get a con­clu­sion to the ne­go­ti­a­tions for the ac­qui­si­tion of the Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery and port be­fore the Au­gust 10 Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

But more than a month af­ter the elec­tion, Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gies and Tech­nolo­gies Lim­it­ed is yet to seal the deal with the Gov­ern­ment.

Last month, Pa­tri­ot­ic’s di­rec­tor and pres­i­dent-gen­er­al of the Oil­field Work­ers Trade Union An­cel Ro­get had ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of us­ing the ne­go­ti­a­tion as a ruse to get votes in the elec­tion. Sev­er­al press con­fer­ences were held giv­ing the me­dia fre­quent up­dates on the ne­go­ti­a­tions which Ro­get said were seeped in “de­ceit and sub­terfuge.”

Now, al­most a year af­ter it won the bid to ac­quire the re­fin­ery and port, Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gies di­rec­tors have gone silent, along with En­er­gy Min­is­ter Franklin Khan, all of whom did not re­spond to Guardian Me­dia’s ques­tions re­gard­ing the state of ne­go­ti­a­tions.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice leader David Ab­du­lah said he was not aware of what was go­ing on with the ne­go­ti­a­tions, adding things may be hap­pen­ing be­hind the scenes.

Ab­du­lah re­newed his call for the Gov­ern­ment to end ne­go­ti­a­tions and hand over the re­fin­ery to Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gies be­fore Bud­get Day on Oc­to­ber 5.

“In my opin­ion, it’s a good and im­por­tant thing for the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance to re­port to the coun­try the con­clu­sion of this long drawn out ne­go­ti­a­tion,” Ab­du­lah said.

He not­ed that a tremen­dous amount of work has to take place for restart­ing the re­fin­ery.

“It will be a ma­jor eco­nom­ic boost to the coun­try, par­tic­u­lar­ly in South Trinidad and this was why I was call­ing for the clo­sure of ne­go­ti­a­tions,” Ab­du­lah said.

On Sep­tem­ber 20 last year, the Gov­ern­ment an­nounced that Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gies had won the bid over 77 com­peti­tors. Pa­tri­ot­ic’s in­ter­na­tion­al team of lawyers worked out the tech­ni­cal and fi­nan­cial de­tails and hand­ed over the 10-point re­quire­ment ahead of time but it would be four months lat­er, on Jan­u­ary 15, that the Gov­ern­ment fi­nal­ly or­gan­ised a team to be­gin ne­go­ti­a­tions. The first round of talks took place on Feb­ru­ary 19 and by March there was a site vis­it of the re­fin­ery and port. The com­pa­ny’s di­rec­tors promised to cre­ate 6,500 jobs once they ac­quired the re­fin­ery and port.

How­ev­er, COVID-19 re­stric­tions im­pact­ed on the ne­go­ti­a­tions, which re­sumed on Ju­ly 14. Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, in the lead-up to elec­tion, said the Gov­ern­ment will not be bul­lied in­to sign­ing the agree­ment with Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gies.

—Rad­hi­ca De Sil­va