Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley says the debt on one Petrotrin loan is TT$1 billion, which he said is the equivalent of the profit made by the National Gas Company this year. But he also says the counter-proposal which the Oilfield Workers’ Trade Union has made for the refinery is not serious enough to change Government’s decision on shutting it down.
Rowley laid the cards on the table on the decision to close the Petrotrin refinery on Tuesday night when he addressed a meeting for the People’s National Movement internal elections in Tunapuna. (See page A6)
The PM recalled that he had first raised the red flag on Petrotrin when he addressed the nation in January 2017, when he indicated that there was a problem that we had to confront.
“I am the only Prime Minister who came and told you what disaster existed in Point-a-Pierre, there is a refinery which is bankrupting the country,” he said.
He took to task those who hadbeen criticising the Government, saying that billions had been going down the drain because of the refinery.
“NGC made one billion dollars in profit this year. The interest on one Petrotrin loan is one billion dollars, all the money made by the NGC is only enough to pay the interest. You losing —why is there a difficulty in understanding that?” he asked.
He said while the “press get into the numbers game looking to find some inconsistency to make that the issue, that is not the issue. The issue is the operation of the refinery, we call the number X.”
He noted a suggestion from Oilfield Workers’ Trade Union president general Ancel Roget to start over a discussion after rejecting the Government’s offer for the union to run the refinery, which Government was willing to give them on favourable terms.
However, he said, his Government was taking action “with fierce urgency.
“We don’t have time to skylark now...all of a sudden they want to start over,” he said.
Rowley said, “We have to treat with a US$850 million payment in a matter of months. You think I have time to start over something we spent a year and a half on?”
He said in Roget’s letter to him, he (Roget) agreed “there should be a restructured company, one that would not threaten the country’s credit rating, but the proposal they are putting to us doesn’t bear that out.”
The PM said while the union wanted to preserve the state ownership of the business, “the one thing we want to preserve is the wider interest of all the people of Trinidad and Tobago.”
Despite this, Rowley said having received a letter from Roget at 1 pm, he replied at 1.30 pm.
“I wrote a letter saying to him if they can come up with something that can stand proper business scrutiny the board will look at it,” Rowley said.
But he said the proposal sent to him was also sent to the board, “and the board has not told me they haven’t seen anything to change the position made by the Government.”
The Prime Minister said there was little choice given the drain which the refinery had been on the economy.
“If we don’t do this now, the question is when? All the talk you hearing, they talk about everything else. The one thing they not talking about is the billions going down the drain, they not engaging that, as if that is not important.”
“If we continue with the company, whatever we do after spending billions we will keep losing billions a year.”