Guyana’s Pres­i­dent Dr Ir­faan Ali says his coun­try is con­cen­trat­ing on build­ing out its own in­fra­struc­ture and he will on­ly be able to make an as­sess­ment on the Petrotrin re­fin­ery when the dis­cus­sion comes up.

He was speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia in an in­ter­view on the side­lines of the Glob­al Bio­di­ver­si­ty Al­liance Sum­mit tak­ing place in George­town.

His com­ments came a day af­ter Nat­ur­al Re­sources Min­is­ter Vick­ram Bhar­rat, told Guardian Me­dia no dis­cus­sion with T&T will take place re­gard­ing the en­er­gy sec­tor un­til af­ter Guyana’s gen­er­al elec­tion sched­uled for Sep­tem­ber 1.

How­ev­er, on Wednes­day evening, Ali was adamant his plans lay with North­ern Brazil.

“We have ma­jor plans here with the gas to shore project com­ing on stream. We are look­ing at the op­por­tu­ni­ty of in­te­grat­ing North­ern Brazil with Guyana to have a stor­age plat­form and a sup­ply plat­form for all as­pects of re­fined prod­ucts. Then we al­so have the gas. We’ll be able to be a ma­jor sup­pli­er of al­most all of the re­quire­ments for the re­gion and North­ern Brazil,” Ali said.

He added: “So, we are busy build­ing out an in­fra­struc­ture here that will sup­port the re­gion and sup­port North­ern Brazil. That is what we are con­cen­trat­ing on. If and when such a dis­cus­sion or pro­pos­al comes our way, we’ll be in a bet­ter po­si­tion to make an as­sess­ment.”

Bhar­rat con­firmed in an in­ter­view on Wednes­day that Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries, Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, reached out to him via a let­ter seek­ing dis­cus­sions.

How­ev­er, Ali is adamant that what­ev­er in­vest­ments Guyana makes in the en­er­gy sec­tor must be vi­able.

He fur­ther added, “I can say we have not had that dis­cus­sion right now [on part­ner­ing with T&T to re­open the re­fin­ery]. Of course, we have dis­cus­sions with every mem­ber of Cari­com on how we can ad­vance de­vel­op­ment, how we can look at ways in which we im­prove our re­la­tion­ship and ex­pand eco­nom­ic op­por­tu­ni­ty. But every­thing must be vi­able. What­ev­er you in­vest in or what­ev­er part­ner­ship you build must be one that is built on sus­tain­abil­i­ty, vi­a­bil­i­ty, one that is built on pub­lic good.”

The Guyanese pres­i­dent says they must al­so look at how the busi­ness of re­fin­ing has rev­o­lu­tionised.

He added, “The busi­ness of re­fin­ery has changed tremen­dous­ly across the world. You have to be very ef­fi­cient in what you do. You have to have the tech­nol­o­gy to back the type of in­fra­struc­ture that you have. We have seen around the world many re­finer­ies are out of op­er­a­tion now. So, it’s to un­der­stand the ecosys­tem, un­der­stand what it is all about.”

The Petrotrin re­fin­ery was closed in No­vem­ber 2018 by the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has es­tab­lished a com­mit­tee chaired by for­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine to con­duct a fea­si­bil­i­ty study in­to whether the re­fin­ery can be re­opened.