Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny CEO Mike Wi­ley was “on the ground” yes­ter­day vis­it­ing San­ta Flo­ra lo­ca­tions to en­sure the se­cu­ri­ty of in­stal­la­tions as the com­pa­ny be­gan work.

Trinidad Pe­tro­le­um Hold­ings Com­pa­ny (TPHC) chair­man Wil­fred Es­pinet con­firmed the sit­u­a­tion to the T&T Guardian fol­low­ing Wi­ley’s first of­fi­cial day of op­er­a­tions.

On yes­ter­day’s over­all start-up of op­er­a­tions of the re­struc­tured en­ti­ty, fol­low­ing the of­fi­cial shut­down of Petrotrin last Fri­day, Es­pinet said, “There was no in­ter­rup­tion of op­er­a­tions and the tran­si­tion went off with­out event. The re­spec­tive planned ac­tiv­i­ty of all the new com­pa­nies went off with­out hitch and we’re now con­cen­trat­ing on en­sur­ing that these op­er­a­tions are at the lev­el of ef­fi­cien­cy they were de­signed for.”

The TPHC is the hold­ing com­pa­ny which suc­ceed­ed Petrotrin fol­low­ing clo­sure of the lat­ter’s op­er­a­tions last Fri­day and start of the re­struc­tured en­er­gy en­ti­ty last Sat­ur­day. Apart from Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um, the Paria Fu­el Trade com­pa­ny (which is han­dling fu­el trad­ing/bunker­ing) al­so be­gan op­er­a­tions. The third en­ti­ty, Guaracara Re­fin­ing com­pa­ny which cov­ers the now-de­funct re­fin­ery as­sets, is not in op­er­a­tion. Damus Ltd is cur­rent­ly in charge of su­per­vis­ing the GRC.

Es­pinet said the Her­itage’s op­er­a­tions in­clude the op­er­a­tion of a num­ber of wells un­der the com­pa­ny’s con­trol while there are con­trac­tu­al pro­duc­tion-shar­ing arrange­ments with oth­er par­ties.

At the Her­itage plant yes­ter­day, Wi­ley, who al­so met with his man­age­ment team, had been en­sur­ing all sites were safe fol­low­ing cer­tain in­ci­dents last Fri­day with some out­go­ing work­ers. But Her­itage of­fi­cials de­scribed those cas­es as “iso­lat­ed mi­nor” in­ci­dents where “a tyre was slashed and the like,” but there was no co-or­di­nat­ed ac­tion. Se­cu­ri­ty has been in­creased at all com­pa­ny lo­ca­tions since the sit­u­a­tion and there have been no more in­ci­dents.

Al­so, im­me­di­ate­ly from last week­end’s lift-off date, the Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Co Ltd com­menced ter­mi­nalling op­er­a­tions. Road tank wag­ons took on board fu­el for ve­hi­cles, kerosene and diesel for dis­tri­b­u­tion all week­end. Tanker-load­ing of crude oil was al­so start­ed over the week­end.

The vast ma­jor­i­ty of Paria em­ploy­ees - just over 200 - are con­tract­ed work­ers, dur­ing this pe­ri­od while the en­ti­ty con­tin­ues to be ful­ly staffed.

At the Guaracara Re­fin­ing Com­pa­ny, where Damus Ltd is en­sur­ing re­fin­ery preser­va­tion, main­te­nance and su­per­vi­sion, Es­pinet said there have in­deed been a num­ber of queries about the re­fin­ery. from in­ter­est­ed par­ties

“But we’re not in­volved in this (yet), those things have a less­er pri­or­i­ty than the safe op­er­a­tions of the new com­pa­nies which start­ed,” he said.

“Damus will be on site at the re­fin­ery un­til we is­sue the Re­quests for Pro­pos­als in­ter­na­tion­al­ly for of­fers of in­ter­est in the re­fin­ery. We’re con­cen­trat­ing on get­ting the re­quired ex­per­tise to help us in­sti­tute the RF­Ps. I’d hope the process will start soon and the RF­Ps may be out by Jan­u­ary.”

Mean­while, of­fi­cials of the TPH­CL hold­ing com­pa­ny said pay­outs have been done for all salaries, ter­mi­na­tion back­pay, out­stand­ing va­ca­tion pay­ments and pay­ment for processed pro­mo­tions al­so.