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Thursday, July 3, 2025

A green future for the Pointe-a-Pierre refinery

by

12 days ago
20250621

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s an­nounce­ment on Labour Day of the for­ma­tion of a gov­ern­ment com­mit­tee to de­vel­op a strat­e­gy for re­ac­ti­vat­ing the Petrotrin Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery has raised ex­pec­ta­tions of eco­nom­ic re­vival in com­mu­ni­ties shak­en by its clo­sure in 2018.

As that com­mit­tee of work­er rep­re­sen­ta­tives and tech­ni­cal ex­perts tries to de­ter­mine a way for­ward for the 108-year-old re­fin­ery, they must tem­per hope with a heavy dose of re­al­i­ty.

An eco­nom­ic kick­start is not guar­an­teed. It is like­ly to cost hun­dreds of mil­lions in ini­tial cap­i­tal costs for turn­around works, mod­ern con­trols and safe­ty up­grades to bring Pointe-a-Pierre back on­line.

The third-gen­er­a­tion tech­nol­o­gy in the moth­balled re­fin­ery lags be­hind new­er, more ef­fi­cient plants in the re­gion and in the cur­rent con­fig­u­ra­tion, the high-resid­ual fu­els it pro­duces will find few tak­ers in a glob­al mar­ket that is shift­ing to­ward low-sul­phur dis­til­lates.

There is al­so the mat­ter of glob­al mo­men­tum to­ward elec­tric ve­hi­cles, bio­fu­els and green hy­dro­gen, which threat­ens long-term de­mand for the con­ven­tion­al re­fined prod­ucts ex­pect­ed to be pro­duced at Pointe-a-Pierre.

The eco­nom­ic im­pact on sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ties al­so needs to be con­sid­ered. Restart­ing an age­ing re­fin­ery with high­er emis­sions, more oily waste­water and sol­id wastes will mean low­er air qual­i­ty, noise, flar­ing and ac­ci­dent risks for those who live and op­er­ate busi­ness­es near­by.

On the up­side, there is cau­tious op­ti­mism that re­open­ing the re­fin­ery will give an im­me­di­ate boost to the lo­cal econ­o­my, pro­vide di­rect em­ploy­ment for en­gi­neers, tech­ni­cians, op­er­a­tors and oth­er in­dus­try pro­fes­sion­als, as well as job cre­ation in sup­port of ac­tiv­i­ties such as lo­gis­tics, se­cu­ri­ty, cater­ing, ad­min and con­struc­tion.

Less re­liance on im­ports of re­fined fu­els could shield lo­cal con­sumers from spikes in glob­al oil mar­kets and gen­er­ate more pre­dictable pump prices.

Pointe-a-Pierre could re­fine not just lo­cal crude but com­pet­i­tive­ly priced Venezue­lan or Guyanese oil, which could put this coun­try in a stronger po­si­tion in the Caribbean en­er­gy mar­ket as a hub of oil re­fin­ing.

For any chance at sus­tain­abil­i­ty and prof­itabil­i­ty, the sys­tems and prac­tices that made the old re­fin­ery a drain on the Trea­sury must be dis­card­ed once and for all. In­stead, the re­fin­ery must be up­grad­ed and trans­formed in­to a mod­el for green in­dus­tri­al re­vival, fit for pur­pose in a low­er-car­bon fu­ture.

That means mod­ernising the plant to re­duce flar­ing, leaks, and en­er­gy waste to sig­nif­i­cant­ly cut emis­sions and im­prove ef­fi­cien­cy and en­vi­ron­men­tal per­for­mance.

In­te­grat­ing so­lar or wind pow­er in­to the re­fin­ery’s op­er­a­tions could al­so re­duce re­liance on fos­sil fu­els; in­stalling car­bon cap­ture and stor­age (CCS) to trap CO₂ emis­sions be­fore they en­ter the at­mos­phere; sourc­ing low­er-sul­fur crude oil; and reusing wa­ter, re­cy­cling waste heat, and re­cov­er­ing byprod­ucts can make the re­fin­ery’s op­er­a­tions more sus­tain­able and cost-ef­fec­tive.

There are fam­i­lies and com­mu­ni­ties in south Trinidad who were hard hit by the de­ci­sion to moth­ball the re­fin­ery as part of the clo­sure of Petrotrin and re­struc­tur­ing of state-owned en­er­gy op­er­a­tions.

In ad­di­tion to the 3,500 per­ma­nent and 1,200 non-per­ma­nent em­ploy­ees who lost their jobs, reper­cus­sions were felt be­yond the re­fin­ery gates in sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ties like Gas­par­il­lo and Clax­ton Bay via busi­ness clo­sures and job loss­es.

How­ev­er, there can­not be a re­turn to the pre-2018 Pointe-a-Pierre op­er­a­tions. In­stead, the re­fin­ery’s re­vival, sup­port­ed by strate­gic in­vest­ments and time­ly in­no­va­tions, should re­sult in a sig­nif­i­cant­ly up­grad­ed plant with the ca­pac­i­ty to meet 21st-cen­tu­ry en­er­gy needs.


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