Rose­marie Sant

New­ly es­tab­lished state en­er­gy com­pa­ny Paria Fu­el might op­er­ate as a hold­ing com­pa­ny pend­ing the farm­ing out of Petrotrin’s re­fin­ery op­er­a­tions. That is the view of en­er­gy ex­pert An­tho­ny Paul who ex­pects that Paria, one of the two new com­pa­nies an­nounced as the suc­ces­sor to Petrotrin, will im­port fu­el for lo­cal and re­gion­al use as “a tran­si­to­ry com­pa­ny un­til re­fin­ing re­sumes.”

As for Her­itage, the ex­plo­ration and pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny, Paul said there is need for clar­i­ty. There will now be three ex­plo­ration and prod­ucts en­ti­ties in the coun­try—Petrotrin, whose as­sets will now fall to Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um, Trinidad Up­stream Down­stream, the com­pa­ny which is tak­ing over the up­stream as­sets of the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny and the Min­istry of En­er­gy, which has pro­duc­tion shares in com­pa­nies op­er­a­tions.

He asked: “Can some­body list all the as­sets the state has eq­ui­ty in? By law that should be list­ed in a reg­is­ter held by the min­is­ter which we should have ac­cess to every day.”

Paul said the lack of in­for­ma­tion on the trans­fer of as­sets from Petrotrin to the new com­pa­nies is wor­ry­ing.

“If any li­cences were trans­ferred from Petrotrin to Her­itage, that should al­so be placed in the reg­is­ter and the pub­lic should know. If NGC’s as­sets have been trans­ferred, or are be­ing trans­ferred, to Trinidad Up­stream-Down­stream Com­pa­ny that should be in the reg­is­ter too,” he said.

Paul was al­so con­cerned about the fu­ture of T&T’s mar­kets in the re­gion, since this coun­try ben­e­fits from the 15 per cent Com­mon Ex­ter­nal Tar­iff un­der which Caribbean coun­tries can­not im­port re­fined prod­ucts cheap­er than this coun­try can sell.

“If Trinidad stops re­fin­ing, the CET will go away. If that goes away it does not give us any ad­van­tage oth­er than we have stor­age ca­pac­i­ty and lo­gis­tics and that will not last long,” he warned.

Paul said there is a lack of in­for­ma­tion and trans­paren­cy in the process.

“It is clear that de­ci­sions are be­ing made. Peo­ple want to know why you mak­ing the de­ci­sions, what your op­tions were and why you chose that one,” he said.

Sim­i­lar con­cerns were raised by for­mer min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance Mar­i­ano Browne who sug­gest­ed that tran­si­tion arrange­ments from Petrotrin to the new com­pa­nies will be “messy and awk­ward.”

In an in­ter­view on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew yes­ter­day, he said of Petrotrin: “This is a com­pa­ny with many mov­ing parts.”

Browne is fore­cast­ing that a “lot of mis­takes will be made,” and while some may not be ap­par­ent to the pub­lic, the “spillover ef­fect of the mis­takes will af­fect dis­tri­b­u­tion and sup­ply. We will feel them very quick­ly. I ex­pect it will be a roller coast­er.”

He said there is no clar­i­ty on the role of NP which is the mar­ket­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion com­pa­ny for gaso­line and fu­el in the coun­try. This is crit­i­cal, he said, since it af­fects pe­tro­le­um deal­ers.

Browne al­so raised ques­tions about the com­pa­ny re­tained to hire staff for the new com­pa­nies HRC and As­so­ciates. He said while he had “every con­fi­dence” they can hire staff for top lev­el po­si­tions,. he is less cer­tain about their abil­i­ty to “put peo­ple in po­si­tions where they have to know how the valves work.”