There is no link be­tween the Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed and Her­itage Oil and Gas of In­di­ana.

A se­nior Petrotrin of­fi­cial yes­ter­day told the T&T Guardian it was a “mere co­in­ci­dence” that the new com­pa­ny reg­is­tered and in­cor­po­rat­ed un­der the Com­pa­nies Act to as­sume the Ex­plo­ration and Pro­duc­tion as­pect pre­vi­ous­ly car­ried out by Petrotrin, had a sim­i­lar name to a com­pa­ny based in the Unit­ed States which fo­cus­es on trad­ing.

The of­fi­cial said the “Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go is whol­ly-owned by the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go, it is reg­is­tered and in­cor­po­rat­ed.”

Weigh­ing in on the name is­sue yes­ter­day, en­er­gy ex­pert An­tho­ny Paul al­so said it is not “un­usu­al” to find com­pa­nies with a sim­i­lar name. Paul said some years ago there was a com­pa­ny named Her­itage lo­cal­ly which was al­so in the Ex­plo­ration and Pro­duc­tion busi­ness, which was sub­se­quent­ly bought out by Tul­low Oil in Guyana.

Paul not­ed that he him­self had reg­is­tered a com­pa­ny called Paria which was al­so meant to do trad­ing.

“These things come and go,” Paul said.

As of yes­ter­day, Her­itage and Paria were reg­is­tered and in­cor­po­rat­ed with two di­rec­tors, Wil­fred Es­pinet and Reynold Ad­jod­has­ingh, in keep­ing with the re­quire­ment that for a com­pa­ny to be reg­is­tered it must have at least two di­rec­tors. The T&T Guardian was told the com­po­si­tion of the board of both com­pa­nies will be up to the Gov­ern­ment. Both com­pa­nies were reg­is­tered and in­cor­po­rat­ed on Oc­to­ber 5.

HRC and As­so­ciates, a com­pa­ny head­ed by Hol­lick Ra­jku­mar, is do­ing the head-hunt­ing for se­nior top ex­ec­u­tive and man­age­r­i­al po­si­tions at both com­pa­nies and as of yes­ter­day, the source said no staff had been re­cruit­ed for any po­si­tion. But the T&T Guardian was told key po­si­tions have been iden­ti­fied and it is ex­pect­ed these will be filled in the next six weeks but be­fore De­cem­ber 1, when the com­pa­nies will of­fi­cial­ly be­gin busi­ness fol­low­ing the Petrotrin shut­down on No­vem­ber 30.

The T&T Guardian was al­so told a sec­ond com­pa­ny, Pro­gres­sive Re­cruit­ment, had been re­tained to as­sist with the staff hunt. In all, 800 em­ploy­ees will be em­ployed by Her­itage while 200 will be em­ployed by Paria.

While there was an ex­pec­ta­tion of a launch of the two new com­pa­nies last week­end, the T&T Guardian was in­formed that there will be no launch un­til both com­pa­nies are ful­ly out­fit­ted with the man­pow­er re­quired. Ac­cord­ing to our source, the com­pa­nies will not just be “lean and mean, with a new cul­ture which does not in­clude nepo­tism and waste,” but will al­so be “fun­da­men­tal­ly dif­fer­ent” to Petrotrin, which was an in­te­grat­ed com­pa­ny pro­duc­ing crude, re­fin­ing the prod­uct and then sell­ing it.

In the case of the two new com­pa­nies, Her­itage will pro­duce the crude for ex­port while Paria will have the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of im­port­ing re­fined prod­ucts to sell lo­cal­ly and in the Caribbean.

As for LPG, the T&T Guardian was told the source of sup­ply will be Phoenix Park Gas Proces­sors Lim­it­ed (PPG­PL), but there may be a need for some kind of sub­sidy from the Gov­ern­ment. Cur­rent­ly, Petrotrin sub­si­dized the cost of LPG to the tune of $200 mil­lion.

Petrotrin chair­man Wil­fred Es­pinet was un­avail­able for com­ment on the new com­pa­nies yes­ter­day, as he was said to be in meet­ings. Calls to his mo­bile phone al­so went unan­swered.

Ef­forts to reach En­er­gy Min­is­ter Franklin Khan on the is­sue were al­so un­suc­cess­ful.