Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has de­fend­ed Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to shut down the Petrotrin re­fin­ery on a trip to Guyana, say­ing it was done as a re­sult of “fi­nan­cial con­cerns” about the re­fin­ery.

He did so as he dis­missed the no­tion that T&T’s pe­tro­le­um sec­tor is in a “state” and there­fore has no au­thor­i­ty to ad­vise Guyana, which is now get­ting in­to the Hy­dro­car­bon sec­tor fol­low­ing mas­sive oil finds.

Row­ley was in Guyana to sign a Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing with Guyana Pres­i­dent Brigadier David Granger on En­er­gy Sec­tor Co­op­er­a­tion.

Granger said he was con­fi­dent that the “com­bi­na­tion of Guyana’s nat­ur­al re­sources with the en­tre­pre­neur­ial ex­per­tise, cap­i­tal and in­vest­ment from Trinidad and To­ba­go would re­sult in a win-win sit­u­a­tion for both coun­tries.”

He dis­missed as “un­jus­ti­fied fears” con­cerns from the Guyana Cham­ber that the agree­ment “was tan­ta­mount to giv­ing away the fam­i­ly jew­els.”

“This is not true, it is sim­ply a means of col­lab­o­rat­ing, not on­ly in pro­duc­tion but in mar­ket­ing, in gas, in treat­ing with oil spills and mul­ti-na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions,” Granger said.

“The MOU is a means of ben­e­fit­ting from Trinidad and To­ba­go’s ad­vice, their ex­pe­ri­ence and ex­per­tise that they have built up over a long time. So the fears that this is some give away are com­plete­ly un­jus­ti­fied.”

Re­spond­ing to the con­cern that this was a T&T takeover of Guyana’s good for­tune, Row­ley ex­pressed “dis­ap­point­ment,” say­ing “it is sim­ply the par­tic­i­pa­tion of a good neigh­bour work­ing with those who have the need for our pres­ence, maybe fi­nance, or en­tre­pre­neur­ial skills.”

Row­ley said, “It is my ex­pec­ta­tion that any and all in­vest­ment in Trinidad and To­ba­go from Guyana and vice ver­sa will be some­thing that will be wel­comed and en­cour­aged and that par­tic­i­pa­tion in our economies will be good for all of us.”

He said T&T was “proud to have the record show that as a small de­vel­op­ing coun­try, which was not a mem­ber of the Paris Club, when Guyana sought debt for­give­ness we in Trinidad and To­ba­go wrote off bil­lions of dol­lars of Guyana’s debt. We are not hold­ing that as any quid pro quo, but it is cir­cum­stan­tial in our po­si­tion that we are a friend­ly co­op­er­at­ing neigh­bour of Guyana.”

Dur­ing the me­dia brief­ing, a re­porter asked Row­ley about the clo­sure of Petrotrin 100 years af­ter T&T coun­try got in­to the oil busi­ness. “Why should the peo­ple of Guyana lis­ten to Trinidad on pe­tro­le­um, specif­i­cal­ly when that coun­try is in the eco­nom­ic state it’s in with re­gard to that sec­tor?”

Row­ley re­spond­ed, “Let me make it clear to any­one lis­ten­ing, Trinidad and To­ba­go is in no state.”

While Row­ley con­ced­ed that “we have had a bit of dif­fi­cul­ty from one time or an­oth­er since time im­memo­r­i­al,” he said T&T had “done well for it­self” and did so large­ly “on the back of the hy­dro­car­bon busi­ness. So I am not sure I sub­scribe to the view of us be­ing in any state.”

As one of the old­est oil pro­duc­ers in the world, Row­ley said over time “it did very well for us as the in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket-place al­lowed us to pros­per.”

He said much of this coun­try’s re­serves to­day “that but­tress us in this dif­fi­cult pe­ri­od is as a re­sult of earn­ings in the mar­ket­place” and gains in ed­u­ca­tion, health, telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion, roads and oth­er sec­tors he said “were paid for by earn­ings in hy­dro­car­bon.”

“If to­day we are hav­ing to treat with a piece of equip­ment, not the oil in­dus­try, the re­fin­ing equip­ment, if we have fi­nan­cial con­cerns about that and we take rec­ti­fi­ca­tion that puts us in no state but in a bet­ter po­si­tion to con­tin­ue to pros­per in the hy­dro­car­bon sec­tor,” the PM said.

Row­ley told the Guyanese me­dia, “We can on­ly see pos­i­tives if our coun­tries col­lab­o­rate in this busi­ness of the hy­dro­car­bon in­dus­try.”