Gail Alexan­der

Com­ple­tion of the Petrotrin head­quar­ters is es­ti­mat­ed to cost $440 mil­lion, of which $170 mil­lion has al­ready been spent to con­struct the steel struc­ture which cur­rent­ly can be seen from the Solomon Ho­choy High­way, says En­er­gy Min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine.Ram­nar­ine spoke about the stalled head­quar­ters project in a state­ment to the Sen­ate yes­ter­day on the state of Petrotrin, in which he gave de­tails of cost es­ca­la­tion at the gaso­line op­ti­mi­sa­tion pro­ramme (GOP), the gas-to-liq­uids project and the cat­alyt­ic crack­er up­grade.

He said be­tween 2005 and 2010 Petrotrin was very re­fin­ery fo­cused, though there was lit­tle or no ex­plo­ration or de­vel­op­ment drilling.Ram­nar­ine added: "As the com­pa­ny deals with the lega­cy is­sues of the GOP and the gas-to-liq­uids project, it has re­fo­cused it­self on the up­stream. It has been sta­bilised and pulled back from the brink and is poised for growth in pro­duc­tion,"

On the head­quar­ters project, Ram­nar­ine said an agree­ment was signed in 2005 with HCP Ar­chi­tects Ltd for pro­vi­sion of the de­sign of Petrotrin's new cor­po­rate head of­fice at Pointe-a-Pierre. The con­struc­tion bud­get then was es­ti­mat­ed at $75 mil­lion for a 60,000 square foot build­ing, he added.In 2006, the for­mer board ap­proved a pro­pos­al with a cost of $250 mil­lion. This in­clud­ed $200 mil­lion for the new build­ing, which was by then 130,000 square feet, and $50 mil­lion for an over­pass across the High­way.

In 2007, Ram­nar­ine said the board ap­proved fur­ther re­vi­sion which in­creased the cost from $200 mil­lion to $365 mil­lion and the build­ing was ex­pand­ed to 168,000 square feet.In De­cem­ber 2012, Ram­nar­ine said the new board stopped con­struc­tion and ten­dered for a Build/Own/Op­er­ate/Trans­fer (BOOT) arrange­ment:"At the time $170 mil­lion had al­ready been ex­pend­ed on the project. The steel struc­ture you see on the high­way has cost $170 mil­lion," Ram­nar­ine added.

He said a sin­gle BOOT bid was re­ceived.Ram­nar­ine added: "Af­ter eval­u­a­tion it was de­ter­mined the bid was not fea­si­ble due to cost. It would have cost Petrotrin $1.5b over 20 years.""Pro­pos­als for the way for­ward are be­ing con­sid­ered. If con­struc­tion is to be com­plet­ed by Petrotrin, the en­tire project is es­ti­mat­ed to cost $440m of which $170m has al­ready been spent."

Ram­nar­ine said the GOP pro­gramme up­on com­ple­tion is ex­pect­ed to in­crease the re­fin­ery's fin­ished gaso­line pro­duc­tion by 10,000 bar­rels per day and in­crease its re­fined prod­ucts mar­gin by US$1.40 per bar­rel.