RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Two days ahead of the Oc­to­ber 31 dead­line, the Oil­field Work­ers’ Trade Union’s Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gies and Tech­nolo­gies Lim­it­ed has sub­mit­ted a counter-pro­pos­al to the Gov­ern­ment in its quest to ac­quire Petrotrin’s Pointe-a-Pierre Re­fin­ery.

In a state­ment is­sued yes­ter­day, Pa­tri­ot­ic di­rec­tor Ozzi War­wick re­vealed that Pa­tri­ot­ic sub­mit­ted a pro­pos­al at 10.07 pm on Thurs­day.

“Dur­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions for the sale of the Pointe-a-Pierre Re­fin­ery and the port, par­ties en­coun­tered a ma­jor chal­lenge con­cern­ing the of­fer made by the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance on Sep­tem­ber 20th, 2019,” War­wick said.

“It was on­ly last Wednes­day, Oc­to­ber 21st 2020, that Pa­tri­ot­ic fi­nal­ly met with the Min­is­te­r­i­al Com­mit­tee in an at­tempt to re­solve the unique chal­lenge as­so­ci­at­ed with the Gov­ern­ment’s of­fer of Sep­tem­ber 20th, last year.”

The union and the Min­is­te­r­i­al Com­mit­tee which is han­dling the ne­go­ti­a­tions had been at log­ger­heads over the of­fer.

On Sep­tem­ber 28, 2020, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley gave both teams up to to­day (Oc­to­ber 31) to agree on a way to­wards a fi­nal clo­sure of the ac­qui­si­tion process. 

“At last week’s meet­ing, Pa­tri­ot­ic re­it­er­at­ed its com­mit­ment to com­plete the process and there­fore agreed to sub­mit a pro­pos­al to over­come the ‘stum­bling block.’ Sub­se­quent­ly, Pa­tri­ot­ic would have met with its in­ter­na­tion­al team and de­vel­oped the pro­pos­al for the way for­ward,” War­wick said.

He not­ed that on Thurs­day, Pa­tri­ot­ic sub­mit­ted a pro­pos­al for the res­o­lu­tion of the is­sues, ahead of the Prime Min­is­ter’s dead­line.

 “Pa­tri­ot­ic earnest­ly hopes that this pro­pos­al will lead to the swift com­ple­tion of the ac­qui­si­tion process, paving the way to the re­open­ing of the re­fin­ery in the in­ter­est of the Peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go,” War­wick added.

On Sep­tem­ber 20, 2019, the Gov­ern­ment an­nounced that Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gies had won the bid to pur­chase the re­fin­ery, beat­ing out 77 com­peti­tors. Pa­tri­ot­ic’s in­ter­na­tion­al team of lawyers worked out the tech­ni­cal and fi­nan­cial de­tails and hand­ed over the ten-point re­quire­ment plan ahead of time. How­ev­er, it would be four months lat­er on Jan­u­ary 15 that the Gov­ern­ment fi­nal­ly or­gan­ised a team to be­gin ne­go­ti­a­tions. The first round of talks took place on Feb­ru­ary 19 and by March there was a site vis­it of the re­fin­ery and port. How­ev­er, COVID-19 re­stric­tions im­pact­ed on the ne­go­ti­a­tions, which re­sumed on Ju­ly 14.

The com­pa­ny’s di­rec­tors have promised to cre­ate 6,500 jobs once they ac­quire the re­fin­ery and port.

Pri­or to the Au­gust 10 Gen­er­al Elec­tion, OW­TU pres­i­dent-gen­er­al An­cel Ro­get had ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of act­ing “with sub­terfuge and de­cep­tion.” He said on Ju­ly 14 the ne­go­ti­at­ing com­mit­tee pro­vid­ed a doc­u­ment for Pa­tri­ot­ic to sign but when its lawyers pe­rused it, they re­alised that it was not in the best in­ter­est of Pa­tri­ot­ic. Meet­ings were held on Ju­ly 15 and 17 and Pa­tri­ot­ic lat­er draft­ed a fi­nal agree­ment, fol­low­ing which the Min­is­te­r­i­al Com­mit­tee raised 22 new is­sues.

In the lead-up to the elec­tion, how­ev­er, Row­ley said the Gov­ern­ment would not be bul­lied in­to sign­ing the agree­ment with Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gies.