Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Fi­nan­cial dan­ger ahead!

Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment MP Stu­art Young has warned of fi­nan­cial con­se­quences that will af­fect Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um and Paria Fu­el Trad­ing in dev­as­tat­ing ways aris­ing from Gov­ern­ment’s leg­is­la­tion for these com­pa­nies to take over Petrotrin’s col­lec­tive agree­ments retroac­tive to 2018.

“This leg­is­la­tion, which is the ful­fil­ment of a UNC cam­paign promise and a deal that was cut, will have se­ri­ous im­pli­ca­tions as we go for­ward in fu­ture,” Young said dur­ing the de­bate of Gov­ern­ment’s Mis­cel­la­neous Pro­vi­sions (Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um, Paria Fu­el Trad­ing and Guaracara Re­fin­ing Vest­ing) (Amend­ment) Bill, 2026, yes­ter­day.

The bill al­lows Her­itage and Paria, as Petrotrin’s suc­ces­sor com­pa­nies, to have suc­ces­sor­ship on Petrotrin’s col­lec­tive agree­ments.

It al­lows the OW­TU - the ma­jor­i­ty union in Petrotrin - to con­tin­ue be­ing recog­nised as such in the two com­pa­nies re­gard­ing the agree­ments.

The bill is retroac­tive to De­cem­ber 2018.

Deny­ing Gov­ern­ment ac­cu­sa­tions that the PNM gov­ern­ment re­struc­tured Petrotrin for “union bust­ing” pur­pos­es, Young read out the 2018 ex­pla­na­tion, de­tail­ing the buildup to the PNM’s de­ci­sion on the re­fin­ery and what led to the de­ci­sion – heavy fi­nan­cial oblig­a­tions of US$850m and US$750m plus sim­i­lar oth­er costs, bil­lion-dol­lar loss­es, oil pro­duc­tion de­cline and high costs to buy oil.

He said the re­fin­ery was nev­er shut down, since it still ex­ists in law, but its orig­i­nal op­er­a­tion was re­struc­tured.

“We took ab­solute­ly no plea­sure in the de­ci­sion; it was dis­cussed for weeks,” Young added, say­ing that gov­ern­ment’s re­spon­si­bil­i­ty was to the peo­ple and the de­ci­sion wasn’t easy but was nec­es­sary, par­tic­u­lar­ly for fu­ture gen­er­a­tions who will car­ry T&T’s fis­cal debts.

Young point­ed to an econ­o­mist’s view yes­ter­day that T&T is right now in a very, very dan­ger­ous and pre­car­i­ous fi­nan­cial fis­cal po­si­tion, with debt to GDP the high­est ever, and for­eign in­debt­ed­ness and forex re­serves at a dan­ger­ous lev­el. Young said this was the per­fect con­text in which to put the bill.

He said prof­its be­ing made by the two com­pa­nies will be jeop­ar­dised.

Young not­ed that the UNC Gov­ern­ment can’t pay teach­ers and oth­er sec­tors un­til 2027.

Say­ing the bill was “ex­cel­lent pol­i­tics” be­ing played by the Gov­ern­ment on Labour Day eve, he added, “But it is its far-reach­ing con­se­quences- es­pe­cial­ly on the fis­cal side - that one must re­flect on.”

Young said the bill al­so en­croach­es on the ju­ris­dic­tion of the In­dus­tri­al Court, which alone has ju­ris­dic­tion to han­dle suc­ces­sor­ship.