T&T faces the pos­si­bil­i­ty of los­ing Cari­com mar­kets for the ex­port of fu­el as the price of fu­el com­ing out of T&T is like­ly to in­crease.

Min­is­ter of En­er­gy Franklin Khan told the Sen­ate yes­ter­day that Cari­com coun­tries now have the op­tion of sourc­ing their prod­ucts on the open mar­ket. He said Petrotrin still has the abil­i­ty to sup­ply small car­goes, in­clud­ing avi­a­tion fu­el, to small Cari­com coun­tries, which gives it a strate­gic ad­van­tage. How­ev­er, with a change in the busi­ness mod­el, with Petrotrin hav­ing to im­port prod­ucts from out­side of the Cari­com re­gion, there is a pos­si­bil­i­ty of in­creas­es in prices.

"The Cari­com mar­ket is unique in that it calls for small pack­age sizes, so not all in­ter­na­tion­al traders can fa­cil­i­tate that mar­ket. That was the strate­gic ad­van­tage of Petrotrin. How­ev­er, there are oth­er play­ers in the mar­ket.

"We have gone in­to a free mar­ket sit­u­a­tion. We are im­port­ing fu­el for re­dis­tri­b­u­tion to Cari­com (and) they have the op­tion to con­tin­ue with Paria or Petrotrin as the case may be, and there is no CET (Com­mon Ex­ter­nal Tar­iff) now on fu­el, so they can go to the in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket and source their fu­el at the most com­pet­i­tive prices in their opin­ion," Khan said.

The CET does not ap­ply any­more as T&T is no longer in the re­fin­ery busi­ness.

Bar­ba­dos has al­ready an­nounced that it has found a new sup­pli­er for pe­tro­le­um prod­ucts. It has al­so been re­ceiv­ing spot ship­ments of gas from the Unit­ed States.

The min­is­ter said no one com­pa­ny will be giv­en ex­clu­sive rights to sup­ply prod­ucts to T&T.

How­ev­er, he not­ed that in­ter­na­tion­al traders, re­fin­ers, and mar­keters will be in­vit­ed to par­tic­i­pate in the sup­ply of re­fined prod­ucts, with the com­pa­ny with the most com­pet­i­tive be­ing award­ed sup­ply con­tracts. Those prod­ucts will in­clude jet fu­el, gas, oil and un­lead­ed gaso­line.

Khan said ear­li­er this year, BP's Latin Amer­i­ca In­te­grat­ed Sales and Trad­ing Group, won the con­tract to sup­ply re­fined prod­ucts fol­low­ing a com­pet­i­tive bid­ding process. He said the com­pa­ny's of­fer was su­pe­ri­or on price and com­mer­cial terms on the com­pos­ite car­gos

The min­is­ter said that on Oc­to­ber 27 Petrotrin re­ceived its first ship­ment of re­fined fu­el, one of 16 car­goes that will be de­liv­ered in the next four months un­der the agree­ment.

He said the sched­ule of im­port­ed prod­ucts has been de­signed to as­sure that a 20-day sup­ply of all prod­uct grades is as­sured in the lo­cal mar­ket.

Khan added that sup­plies from Jan­u­ary 1, 2019, will be sourced un­der the new en­ti­ty, Paria Trad­ing Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed.