The Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU) is call­ing on Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley to clar­i­fy whether pref­er­ence has been giv­en to a for­eign com­pa­ny in a bid to ac­quire the Guaracara Re­fin­ing Com­pa­ny Ltd.

In a me­dia con­fer­ence at the OW­TU’s Para­mount Build­ing head­quar­ters in San Fer­nan­do on Fri­day, pres­i­dent gen­er­al An­cel Ro­get called for the res­ig­na­tion of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries Min­is­ter Franklin Khan over his state­ments made at the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment meet­ing in Point Fortin on Thurs­day night.

“Is it a done deal?” Ro­get asked as he said the union has al­ready be­gun dis­cus­sions with its at­tor­ney.

Khan had an­nounced that the re­fin­ing com­pa­ny would be soon be trans­ferred to a new op­er­a­tor, which would most like­ly be an in­dige­nous com­pa­ny. He said that no lo­cal com­pa­ny could han­dle the size and com­plex­i­ty of the old Pointe-a-Pierre Re­fin­ery. He had an­nounced that the bids were in and were be­ing eval­u­at­ed.

Tak­ing um­brage to the state­ment, Ro­get said it ap­pears that Khan has in­for­ma­tion that the rest of the coun­try does not know, about a bid­ding process that is yet to be com­plet­ed. The OW­TU, through its re­cent­ly in­cor­po­rat­ed Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gies and Tech­nolo­gies Com­pa­ny Ltd, were among 50 bid­ders.

Last Sep­tem­ber, fol­low­ing the an­nounce­ment of Petrotrin’s clo­sure, Row­ley said that the re­fin­ing as­sets of Petrotrin would be put in­to a sep­a­rate com­pa­ny and the OW­TU would have been giv­en the first op­tion to own and op­er­ate it on the most favourable terms.

The OW­TU re­ject­ed the of­fer to pur­chase the re­fin­ery, but fol­low­ing its clo­sure, it met with for­eign in­vestors and even­tu­al­ly in­cor­po­rat­ed its own com­pa­ny to bid for the re­fin­ery.

Dur­ing May Day cel­e­bra­tions, Ro­get an­nounced that Pa­tri­ot­ic was prepar­ing to in­ter­view ap­pli­cants for po­si­tions for work in the re­fin­ery and that there were ap­prox­i­mate­ly 4,000 ap­pli­ca­tions for jobs.

Up to Labour Day, the union was con­fi­dent in its bid for the re­fin­ery. How­ev­er, the union said that since Khan’s state­ment on Thurs­day, they have been in­un­dat­ed with calls from con­cerned cit­i­zens and for­mer work­ers.

“We find it to be very trou­bling that at that meet­ing, the pub­lic fo­rum, the min­is­ter would have used that stage to alert the coun­try and who­ev­er else was pay­ing at­ten­tion to his knowl­edge of a process that has not been com­plet­ed as yet. I wish to state that the Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union has in­cor­po­rat­ed a com­pa­ny by the name of Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gy to get in­volved in the bid­ding process and to ac­quire the re­fin­ery and all of the oth­er as­sets at Pointe-a-Pierre for the pur­pos­es of pro­vid­ing fu­el, en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty and al­so rev­enue and for­eign ex­change for Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“We are in the process, but we are bound by what is called a non-dis­clo­sure agree­ment, mean­ing that as part of the process that has a re­quire­ment for us to pro­vide cer­tain things. We are not to speak about that pub­licly. We are not speak­ing about what stage we are in the process, who are the mem­bers of our con­sor­tium. All of those things we are not sup­posed to speak about be­cause we are bound by a non-dis­clo­sure agree­ment,” Ro­get said.

He said while Row­ley did not re­peat Khan’s state­ments, he did not de­ny it. Putting the re­fin­ery in the con­trol of for­eign­ers, he said, is not in the in­ter­est of the coun­try.

Ro­get de­scribed Khan’s claim that T&T did not pos­sess the tal­ent to op­er­ate a re­fin­ery of that size and com­plex­i­ty as in­sult­ing. He said Khan was the one who lacked the ex­pe­ri­ence in re­fin­ing, ex­plo­ration and mar­ket­ing of oil.

He said Petrotrin would have con­tributed $60 bil­lion to the na­tion­al econ­o­my and it was un­der the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment, who ap­point­ed the late Mal­colm Jones to chair the board of Petrotrin. Dur­ing Jones’ tenure, the com­pa­ny em­barked on sev­er­al failed projects that led to sig­nif­i­cant debt, which con­tributed to its fi­nan­cial chal­lenges, and even­tu­al clo­sure.

He chal­lenged Khan to a de­bate on Petrotrin’s down­fall and said that when tak­ing is­sue with work­ers’ salaries, he should com­pare them to his own and the what he con­tributes to the coun­try for his pay.