The as­sets of Petrotrin’s re­fin­ery will be trans­ferred to a new com­pa­ny—Guaracara Re­fin­ing Com­pa­ny—one of four sub­sidiaries of a new hold­ing com­pa­ny Trinidad Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed which re­places the debt-bur­dened State-owned hy­dro­car­bon en­ti­ty.

The oth­er com­pa­nies to fall un­der the hold­ing com­pa­ny are Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed, Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um and Petrotrin, which re­mains an en­ti­ty in name, ac­cord­ing to En­er­gy Min­is­ter Franklin Khan, “to deal with lega­cy mat­ters on the ta­ble for years to come.”

Speak­ing at yes­ter­day’s post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence, Khan said a vest­ing or­der was now be­ing worked on to trans­fer the ex­plo­ration and pro­duc­tion as­sets of Petrotrin to Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um. That in­cludes the Off­shore Trin­mar Acreage and all as­sets in­volved in E&P.

An­oth­er process is un­der­way to trans­fer the ter­mi­nal port and pier to Paria and the as­sets of the re­fin­ery will be put in­to Guaracara Re­fin­ing Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed, which, Khan said, is the com­pa­ny the Prime Min­is­ter re­ferred to which will be seek­ing op­por­tu­ni­ty at­ten­tion for the re­fin­ery.

Khan shot down re­ports that a buy­er had been sourced for the re­fin­ery, say­ing “there is ab­solute­ly no truth to that state­ment.”

He ex­plained that when Guaracara Re­fin­ery Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed be­comes “op­er­a­tional very short­ly, we will be putting out a very broad-based Re­quest for Pro­pos­als (RFP) from the en­tire in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket and there will al­so be a da­ta room at the Point-a-Pierre re­fin­ery so that in­ter­est­ed par­ties can come and view the da­ta, view the plans and then make a rea­son­able pro­pos­al to the State.”

Khan said those who are sub­mit­ting pro­pos­als will be free to sub­mit “any busi­ness mod­el, whether you want to pur­chase the re­fin­ery, whether you want to have a pro­cess­ing agree­ment, whether you have a source of crude, whether you have a new busi­ness mod­el every­thing will be open for dis­cus­sion.” The Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union, the main union rep­re­sent­ing work­ers at Petrotrin, has al­ready teamed up with two in­ter­na­tion­al com­pa­nies to bid for a lease arrange­ment of the re­fin­ery as­sets.

Khan said they were pre­pared to “ac­cept all kinds or pro­pos­als in terms of dif­fer­ent busi­ness mod­els and dif­fer­ent op­er­at­ing strate­gies to recom­mence the re­fin­ery op­er­a­tion un­der a dif­fer­ent mod­el.”

He said the Gov­ern­ment was con­fi­dent it will get a pro­pos­al that would be ac­cept­able and one where the coun­try will no longer have this “al­ba­tross around our neck called a re­fin­ery.”

Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Min­is­ter Stu­art Young ex­plained that while Khan used the word “op­er­a­tionalised” in ref­er­ence to Guaracara Re­fin­ery, “we don’t mean that the re­fin­ery will be op­er­at­ing. It is just the re­fin­ery as­sets are be­ing placed in this spe­cial pur­pose ve­hi­cle for the pur­pose of Gov­ern­ment re­ceiv­ing pro­pos­als.”

Young said pro­pos­als re­ceived will be “eval­u­at­ed and a de­ci­sion tak­en, we have no horse in the race, we want to see what comes in and then a de­ter­mi­na­tion will be made,” he said.

As it now stands, he said from all the ad­vice they had been giv­en “we were told con­tin­u­ing as it is it can­not be vi­able com­mer­cial­ly go­ing for­ward.”

Young said they had been told the re­fin­ery will need an im­me­di­ate cash in­jec­tion of be­tween $7 to $8 bil­lion to get the plant and ma­chin­ery in a state that it can con­tin­ue and $25 bil­lion to keep the op­er­a­tion go­ing.

"So who­ev­er is go­ing to come with a pro­pos­al, those are the el­e­ments we need to look at,” Young said.

Mean­time, Young al­so an­nounced that the first ship­ment of fu­el will come in­to the coun­try be­tween Oc­to­ber 22 and 24 and the first crude to be ex­port­ed from this coun­try will hap­pen in the pe­ri­od Oc­to­ber 30 to No­vem­ber 1. Both Young and Khan as­sured there are ad­e­quate fu­el sup­plies in the coun­try.

Khan said, “I want to give the as­sur­ance to the coun­try there will be a seam­less tran­si­tion of the sup­ply of liq­uid fu­els to the mar­ket, of LPG and of bi­tu­men.”