An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

Busi­ness groups and an en­er­gy ex­pert see the move by the Gov­ern­ment to ap­point a 12-mem­ber com­mit­tee to de­vel­op a strat­e­gy for the Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery’s re­ac­ti­va­tion and sub­mit a re­port by Oc­to­ber as a step in the right di­rec­tion.

Last week, the com­mit­tee, which is head­ed by for­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine, was an­nounced by En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal.

Mooni­lal said the min­istry had sub­mit­ted a note to last week’s Cab­i­net meet­ing to es­tab­lish a com­mit­tee to de­vel­op a strat­e­gy for the re­ac­ti­va­tion of the Guaracara re­fin­ery, which has been out of com­mis­sion since 2018.

The oth­er mem­bers of the com­mit­tee are: for­mer Petrotrin vice pres­i­dent of fi­nance, Shari­ba Ali Ra­jah; for­mer vice pres­i­dent of re­tail and mar­ket­ing, Kelvin Har­nanan; for­mer re­fin­ery man­ag­er, Gow­tam Ma­haraj (now chair­man of the Pe­nal/Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion; UWI lec­tur­er in en­gi­neer­ing/main­te­nance, Kishore Ja­groo; op­er­a­tions and process en­gi­neer, Leslie Chang; OW­TU branch pres­i­dent, Christo­pher Jack­man; elec­tri­cal sys­tems/for­mer OW­TU month­ly rep­re­sen­ta­tive, Dan­ny Goolcha­ran; plan­ning and eco­nom­ics sched­ul­ing com­mer­cial port ma­rine man­ag­er, Mar­garet De Sil­va Okan­do; En­er­gy Min­istry se­nior chem­i­cal en­gi­neer, Yashee Car­ring­ton; En­er­gy Min­istry chem­i­cal en­gi­neer, Anuskha Ben­ny-Sookoo; and port, ma­rine and ship­ping ex­pert, Len Chan Chow

Ram­nar­ine, who spoke to Guardian Me­dia on Sun­day, said the re­fin­ery’s clo­sure has had a ma­jor im­pact on the coun­try’s econ­o­my, its en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty, and its po­si­tion in the re­gion.

More­over, he em­pha­sised that the fall­out has had a sig­nif­i­cant im­pact on south Trinidad, the work­ers, and the con­tract­ing com­mu­ni­ty that sup­port­ed the re­fin­ery’s op­er­a­tions.

Com­ment­ing on the move, Pres­i­dent of the San Fer­nan­do Greater Cham­ber (SFGCC) Ki­ran Singh said the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty con­sid­ers the move as a strate­gic one and be­lieves the for­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter and its mem­bers are well qual­i­fied and ex­pe­ri­enced to ad­vise the gov­ern­ment.  

Singh point­ed out that the re­fin­ery has been closed for sev­enl years and it has the po­ten­tial to be a net for­eign ex­change earn­er, but sev­er­al is­sues have to be ad­dressed.  

“The tech­nol­o­gy and equip­ment are dat­ed. It will cost over US$1 bil­lion to restart and maybe a year be­fore sup­ply­ing the prod­uct to the mar­ket. This coun­try does not pro­duce enough crude for the re­fin­ery to op­er­ate op­ti­mal­ly. These fac­tors of pro­duc­tion can be re­solved. The plant and ma­chin­ery can still be pro­duc­tive if giv­en the right im­pe­tus,” he ex­plained.

Singh not­ed that the re­cent an­nounce­ment by the min­is­ter that oil and gas pro­duc­tion has in­creased since the gov­ern­ment took of­fice is an en­cour­ag­ing sign.  

“Pro­duc­tion was de­clin­ing for some time. This fact, cou­pled with news that the re­fin­ery will open, will in­spire oth­er pro­duc­ers to ramp up pro­duc­tion. Low­er-cost lo­gis­tics will al­so be re­al­ized when the re­fin­ery is opened.”

Singh out­lined that with the clo­sure of the re­fin­ery, the small and medi­um-sized en­ter­pris­es (SMEs) sec­tor suf­fered tremen­dous loss­es. Fam­i­ly-owned en­ter­pris­es can re-emerge with the con­fi­dence that com­mer­cial ac­tiv­i­ty is be­ing gen­er­at­ed.

Con­fed­er­a­tion of Re­gion­al Busi­ness Cham­bers (CR­BC) chair­man Vivek Char­ran said there would be a lot of ac­tiv­i­ty in the area and that could lead to com­mer­cial ac­tiv­i­ty, which would ben­e­fit a lot of the busi­ness­es in the area and al­so it might at­tract some busi­ness­es to start up shops in the com­mu­ni­ty as well.

“We are al­so wait­ing to hear what the re­port comes out in four months from the, I think it’s not on­ly us, I think every­body’s pret­ty in­ter­est­ed in what they’re go­ing to say. Pub­lic sen­ti­ment is more for the re­open­ing of the re­fin­ery than against it. But I be­lieve when the re­port comes out and the re­al work be­gins, it would be known what the next step is and how the re­fin­ery at­tracts the in­vest­ment and whether it would be open­ing in stages,” Char­ran de­tailed.

Asked if it would be a wise de­ci­sion to have the Oil­fields Work­ers Trade Union (OW­TU) in­volved in the re­fin­ery, Char­ran said that al­low­ing the union to be stake­hold­ers at the re­fin­ery would be a pos­i­tive move as it would help it un­der­stand how to deal with work­ers’ is­sues and ad­vise man­age­ment how to avoid in­dus­tri­al ac­tion.

“I don’t see any way for­ward oth­er than mak­ing the union part of the ac­tu­al run­ning of the re­fin­ery or the ad­min­is­tra­tive process or the man­age­ment process. The ques­tion can be asked how we then evolve or im­prove re­la­tions be­tween the em­ploy­ees and ad­min­is­tra­tion, and the an­swer is to have the work­ers as the main fo­cus of the op­er­a­tion.  

Ques­tions to ask

While en­er­gy ex­pert An­tho­ny Paul agrees with the set­up of a com­mit­tee, he said the ques­tions that need to be asked are whether it is vi­able to open and op­er­ate this re­fin­ery com­fort­ably and safe­ly.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, Paul not­ed that an­oth­er fac­tor to con­sid­er is the var­i­ous op­tions, such as lo­cal own­er­ship, the pri­vate sec­tor, the union, or the state, which would need to be ex­am­ined to de­ter­mine which is best suit­ed for the econ­o­my.

“The ques­tion is, what does the gov­ern­ment want? What are the ob­jec­tives that the gov­ern­ment set for you? And if among those ob­jec­tives is union par­tic­i­pa­tion, what are the con­straints or op­por­tu­ni­ties for the gov­ern­ment to do that,” Paul added.