Two days af­ter re­ject­ing Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gies and Tech­nolo­gies Com­pa­ny’s (Pa­tri­ot­ic) pro­pos­al to ac­quire the for­mer as­sets of Petrotrin, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert said the Cab­i­net has agreed to give the com­pa­ny an­oth­er 15 days to se­cure $US500 mil­lion.

Dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence on Tues­day, En­er­gy and En­er­gy Af­fairs Min­is­ter Franklin Khan said the ne­go­ti­a­tion failed be­cause Pa­tri­ot­ic did not show its abil­i­ty to raise the mon­ey need­ed to pur­chase the Guaracara Re­fin­ing Com­pa­ny and the Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny.

Im­bert said all Pa­tri­ot­ic pro­duced was a let­ter from the Roy­al Bank of Cana­da, stat­ing their in­ter­est in as­sist­ing the com­pa­ny. He said the bank gave no guar­an­tee to fi­nance the deal.

How­ev­er, Pa­tri­ot­ic’s par­ent or­gan­i­sa­tion, the Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU) said that it was the Gov­ern­ment that mis­han­dled the ne­go­ti­a­tion. Pa­tri­ot­ic ini­tial­ly of­fered an up­front pay­ment of US$700 mil­lion, but the Gov­ern­ment coun­tered, pre­sent­ing the com­pa­ny with a ten-year pay­ment plan and three years mora­to­ri­um.

OW­TU’s pres­i­dent gen­er­al An­cel Ro­get said the Gov­ern­ment changed its mind af­ter it could not free the as­sets from in lien it in­curred from cred­i­tors.

In a me­dia con­fer­ence on Tues­day, Ro­get called on Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley to meet with Pa­tri­ot­ic and its fi­nancier, Cred­it Su­isse so the ac­qui­si­tion could con­clude.

But in a me­dia re­lease from Im­bert yes­ter­day, he not­ed that by let­ter dat­ed Sep­tem­ber 25, 2019, the Gov­ern­ment in­formed Pa­tri­ot­ic that it was the pre­ferred bid­der for cer­tain as­sets of Guaracara and Paria. The first item in the list of de­liv­er­ables in the let­ter was the con­fir­ma­tion of Pa­tri­ot­ic’s abil­i­ty to fi­nance the pur­chase and op­er­a­tion of the re­fin­ery.

A let­ter from Pa­tri­ot­ic to Cor­po­ra­tion Sole dat­ed Jan­u­ary 18, stat­ed that “In our con­ver­sa­tions with Cred­it Su­isse, they have ex­pressed great en­thu­si­asm and con­fi­dence of their ca­pac­i­ty to suc­cess­ful­ly fi­nance the ac­qui­si­tion price of US$500 Mil­lion for Pa­tri­ot­ic.

“Ac­cord­ing­ly, in my ca­pac­i­ty as Cor­po­ra­tion Sole, I was di­rect­ed by Cab­i­net to write to Pa­tri­ot­ic to­day to in­form them that Cab­i­net met and de­cid­ed to­day that Pa­tri­ot­ic will be giv­en a fur­ther 15 days, up to Fri­day, Feb­ru­ary 5, 2021, to pro­duce from Cred­it Su­isse, a firm, bind­ing com­mit­ment to fi­nance for Pa­tri­ot­ic, the ac­qui­si­tion price for the as­sets re­ferred to above of US$500 Mil­lion,” Im­bert said.

Should Pa­tri­ot­ic fail to meet the dead­line, the Gov­ern­ment will ac­cept new bids for the as­sets.

New bid­der emerges

The Con­fed­er­a­tion of Re­gion­al Busi­ness Cham­bers is con­sid­er­ing sub­mit­ting a bid and is al­ready dis­cussing lo­cal and for­eign in­vestors for its ef­forts.

Pres­i­dent of the Greater San Fer­nan­do Area Cham­ber of Com­merce Ki­ran Singh said the Con­fed­er­a­tion com­pris­es of 14 busi­ness cham­bers across the coun­try. Singh said that mem­bers had pre­lim­i­nary dis­cus­sions al­ready and there is an agen­da to meet and draft a pro­pos­al to ac­quire the re­fin­ery.

“We want to throw our hat in the ring and make some pos­i­tive con­tri­bu­tion to the over­all con­clu­sion of the old Petrotrin re­fin­ery sale. It re­mains wor­ry­ing for us in South Trinidad with so many thou­sands of work­ers laid off, in­clud­ing those in the down­stream in­dus­try which has not re­cov­ered since it re­lied so heav­i­ly on Petrotrin,” Singh said.

Chair­man of the Cou­va Point Lisas Cham­ber of Com­merce Ram­c­hand Ra­jbal Maraj said the failed ne­go­ti­a­tion be­tween the Gov­ern­ment and Pa­tri­ot­ic was sad. Maraj said many peo­ple were hop­ing for a restart of the re­fin­ery so it could pro­vide much-need­ed em­ploy­ment. Giv­en that the Gov­ern­ment and Pa­tri­ot­ic gave con­flict­ing ac­counts of the ne­go­ti­a­tions, he said the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty would like to know what re­al­ly hap­pened.

Maraj said if Pa­tri­ot­ic is truth­ful, then the Gov­ern­ment is ob­lig­at­ed to give the com­pa­ny an­oth­er chance. 

Mean­while, Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has la­belled as bizarre, this move by Gov­ern­ment to give Pa­tri­ot­ic an­oth­er try.

In a state­ment, she ques­tioned how the com­pa­ny would se­cure the amount in a short space of time.

She ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of hav­ing a lack of ac­count­abil­i­ty and open­ness.

“The Gov­ern­ment is clear­ly play­ing games with our sa­cred bil­lion-dol­lar as­sets by op­er­at­ing in this ad hoc man­ner.”