Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley says if some­one is buy­ing, then the Gov­ern­ment will sell Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny.

He made the com­ment yes­ter­day as he gave the Gov­ern­ment’s fi­nal stance on the com­pa­ny’s fu­ture at the post-Cab­i­net brief­ing at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann’s.

He ex­plained that while the Gov­ern­ment had not yet put the com­pa­ny up for sale, it would in­deed be open to of­fers.

“There is no po­si­tion tak­en by the Gov­ern­ment to sell the Paria com­pa­ny, which is the fu­el sup­ply com­pa­ny, but based on what pro­pos­al is made to us, Paria is an as­set which the Gov­ern­ment will lever­age to the best in­ter­est of the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go,” Row­ley said.

His stance came days af­ter Trinidad Pe­tro­le­um Hold­in­gs chair­man Wil­fred Es­pinet said there was no rea­son for the Gov­ern­ment to keep the state-owned en­er­gy sub­sidiary and as such a re­quest for a pro­pos­al had been is­sued for Paria Fu­el as well as for the Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery. Es­pinet said there was no strate­gic rea­son for the state to keep Paria Fu­el once fu­el se­cu­ri­ty and fu­el com­pet­i­tive­ness could be guar­an­teed. But the En­er­gy Min­istry sub­se­quent­ly de­nied this, with Min­is­ter Franklin Khan say­ing the com­pa­ny was not for sale.

This con­fu­sion prompt­ed Op­po­si­tion leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to call on Gov­ern­ment to halt all plans for the com­pa­ny un­til next year’s Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

Yes­ter­day, Row­ley cleared up the mat­ter fur­ther.

“That de­ci­sion (to see Paria) was not tak­en and no such de­ci­sion has been giv­en and I am giv­ing you the fi­nal word on this, to clar­i­fy those two po­si­tions that Paria is a part of the re­struc­tur­ing of Petrotrin and if the re­struc­tur­ing is go­ing to be a restart-up of the re­fin­ery and it in­volves any in­put for Paria, we would be crazy to have the re­fin­ery die when it could live be­cause of Paria,” Row­ley said.

He ex­plained that Paria Fu­el’s role was to en­sure the coun­try and var­i­ous oth­er coun­tries that had de­pend­ed on the re­struc­tured Petrotrin for fu­els such as gas and diesel would still have a sup­ply. But if an­oth­er com­pa­ny be­gan op­er­a­tions at the re­fin­ery, it could com­pli­cate Paria’s role, the PM said.

“Paria ex­ists to pro­vide us with fu­el and to sup­ply and if there is a sup­ply be­ing made in Trinidad and To­ba­go, then clear­ly we have not got to the point where and how that sup­ply and Paria would co­ex­ist,” the PM said.

He said de­spite the de­ci­sion to close Petrotrin, the Gov­ern­ment was keen on see­ing the re­fin­ery in op­er­a­tion. How­ev­er, he said they opt­ed to shut down the State-owned oil com­pa­ny be­cause it was too cost­ly to op­er­ate giv­en the debts it had in­curred. Petrotrin ceased op­er­a­tions at the end of No­vem­ber last year.

But he coun­tered that they will seel it if the right bid­der comes along and of­fers the right price.

“The Gov­ern­ment has said over and over we want to see the re­fin­ery in op­er­a­tion if it can be had. And we are go­ing to do every­thing that is busi­ness like to get the re­fin­ery back in­to op­er­a­tion,” he said.

“The fact that we don’t own it doesn’t mean it isn’t’ valu­able, all it means is some­body else in the pri­vate sec­tor would be do­ing it, hav­ing re­lieved us of the bur­den that we were car­ry­ing for how long.”

He al­so said clam­our­ing about the po­ten­tial sale was al­so pre­ma­ture, giv­en that pro­pos­als had not yet been tabled for the re­fin­ery.

“We have not got the pro­pos­als as yet, so why should we close the door on a pro­pos­al that we have not seen. I am anx­ious to see the pro­pos­als that we might get be­cause some­where there might be some­one who sees Pointe-a-Pierre as their gold mine,” he said.

Row­ley said this stance did not con­tra­dict the Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to close down Petrotrin, as any po­ten­tial own­er of the re­fin­ery may not have the same chal­lenges the Gov­ern­ment faced.

“The new own­er is go­ing to be un­der new arrange­ments, they will have to find their own oil, find their own mon­ey, do all of those things which we have done and have lost bil­lions do­ing it, but maybe they could do it with their own oil and do it dif­fer­ent­ly,” Row­ley said.

He said the Gov­ern­ment was main­tain­ing its po­si­tion that re­gard­less of the com­pa­ny’s own­er, it would seek to have some el­e­ment of con­trol on the pric­ing of the prod­ucts made in the re­fin­ery for the lo­cal mar­ket.