An in­ter­na­tion­al in­vestor has ex­pressed in­ter­est in state-owned Petrotrin and is will­ing to part­ner with the Oil­fields’ Work­ers Trade Union (OW­TU) in a joint ven­ture lease of the re­fin­ery, OW­TU Pres­i­dent Gen­er­al An­cel Ro­get con­firmed yes­ter­day.

Ro­get made the com­ment af­ter his con­tin­gent met with Petrotrin board rep­re­sen­ta­tives yes­ter­day at the Hy­att Re­gency, Port-of-Spain, to present the union’s plan to take over the re­fin­ery and keep it in busi­ness.

“This is a win-win sit­u­a­tion and any­one re­fus­ing that needs to ex­plain that to the pop­u­la­tion,” Ro­get said af­ter the meet­ing.

“The board posed a num­ber of ques­tions to the union and we are ex­pect­ed to con­tin­ue com­mu­ni­ca­tion un­til a meet­ing next Thurs­day. There are many oth­er op­tions than to send Petrotin work­ers home and clos­ing it down.”

He said the bur­den on the coun­try would be worse if the Petrotrin work­ers were added to the ris­ing un­em­ploy­ment fig­ures.

The OW­TU move comes on the ba­sis of Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s state­ments dur­ing his ad­dress to the na­tion on the fu­ture of Petrotrin on Sep­tem­ber 2. In that ad­dress, Row­ley of­fered the OW­TU first dibs on the pur­chase of the re­fin­ery. The union fol­lowed that up by de­liv­er­ing a let­ter to Row­ley on Tues­day in which it in­di­cat­ed its in­ter­est in ac­cept­ing the of­fer.

“Our pro­pos­al is not one for the OW­TU to own the re­fin­ery, I want to make that point. Our pro­pos­al is found­ed on the prin­ci­ple that these as­sets be­long to the peo­ple of T&T,” Ro­get said, adding any arrange­ment that the union en­ters in­to would ben­e­fit the peo­ple of T&T.

“We re­spond­ed to the call by the Prime Min­is­ter. In the mean­time, we will be dis­cussing with our busi­ness part­ners and those par­ties, a num­ber of them, who al­ready ex­pressed in­ter­est in some sort of a joint ven­ture.”

Ro­get said now that the board has that in­for­ma­tion, the se­cret in­vestor could be made pub­lic af­ter next week’s meet­ing.

“There is a ma­jor so­cial im­pact cost that the Gov­ern­ment has not tak­en in­to ac­count. It is not just about the work­ers, clos­ing down the re­fin­ery will not prof­it the coun­try at all,” he said.

In a brief in­ter­view fol­low­ing the meet­ing, how­ev­er, Ro­get said he was not over­ly con­fi­dent of the board’s re­cep­tion, but on­ly be­cause there was no trust.

On Tues­day, Row­ley is­sued a state­ment re­it­er­at­ing that the re­fin­ery would be shut down. He not­ed that since Au­gust 21 he had told the union that the re­fin­ery would cease to op­er­ate. In that state­ment, Row­ley said once the re­fin­ery is re­moved from the rest of the op­er­a­tions then it will be avail­able “for at­ten­tion”. He said that if the OW­TU pre­sent­ed an ac­cept­able busi­ness pro­pos­al, the Gov­ern­ment will treat it with re­spect. How­ev­er, Row­ley added, if more at­trac­tive pro­pos­als be­came avail­able the Gov­ern­ment would treat with them in the in­ter­est of the tax­pay­ers.

“We can­not trust the Prime Min­is­ter and we can­not trust the Min­is­ter of En­er­gy,” Ro­get said yes­ter­day.

“Doesn’t this tell you some­thing about this man? He is now in­tro­duc­ing in­to the equa­tion that he is will­ing to give his friends, his fi­nanciers, his as­so­ciates what he promised to the peo­ple and he ex­posed him­self.

“We are now call­ing his bluff. The ball is in the court of the Prime Min­is­ter, the Gov­ern­ment, the board.”

He added: “I do not want to an­tic­i­pate any re­sponse be­cause this is a Gov­ern­ment that we can­not trust, this is a Prime Min­is­ter that we can­not trust.”

Ro­get said it was pass­ing strange that the Gov­ern­ment planned to shut down the re­fin­ery be­cause they couldn’t lo­cate an in­vestor or buy­er but now can deal with the re­fin­ery.

“We have been in­un­dat­ed with calls and in­ter­ests since we an­nounced that we were look­ing for a part­ner,” he said.