An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers

@guardian.co.tt

The En­er­gy Cham­ber is ready to col­lab­o­rate close­ly with Oan­do Plc to en­sure the safe re­sump­tion of op­er­a­tions at the Guaracara/Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery.

Act­ing Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young yes­ter­day an­nounced that the Niger­ian com­pa­ny is the pre­ferred bid­der for lease of the re­fin­ery.

In a state­ment fol­low­ing the an­nounce­ment, the cham­ber said it has long sup­port­ed pri­vati­sa­tion of the re­fin­ery to put it to pro­duc­tive use, as sig­nif­i­cant cap­i­tal in­vest­ment is re­quired to bring the re­fin­ery’s as­sets back in­to a pro­duc­tive and prof­itable op­er­a­tion.

It said the in­vest­ment must be care­ful­ly de­ployed and man­aged, as it in­volves sub­stan­tial risk, and for this rea­son, it has con­sis­tent­ly main­tained no ad­di­tion­al tax­pay­er funds should be al­lo­cat­ed to the re­fin­ery.

“Giv­en the scale of the in­vest­ment need­ed, most of this cap­i­tal was al­ways ex­pect­ed to orig­i­nate from in­ter­na­tion­al sources, though the En­er­gy Cham­ber has strong­ly sup­port­ed and en­cour­aged lo­cal pri­vate sec­tor par­tic­i­pa­tion as well,” the cham­ber said.

The cham­ber not­ed that re­viv­ing op­er­a­tions will gen­er­ate new jobs, cre­ate busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ties and in­crease tax rev­enue for Gov­ern­ment.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, it said for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment in these as­sets will con­tribute to greater for­eign cur­ren­cy cir­cu­la­tion with­in the econ­o­my.

It added that South Trinidad is home to many skilled work­ers and ex­pe­ri­enced con­trac­tors who will play a role in safe­ly and ef­fi­cient­ly restart­ing op­er­a­tions.

San Fer­nan­do Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Daphne Bartlett mean­while said she was dis­ap­point­ed to see the re­fin­ery in for­eign hands.

“Imag­ine we are buy­ing fu­el from a lit­tle is­land called Ja­maica, that has no oil but just built a very small re­fin­ery.

“I thought that we should not have closed the re­fin­ery. The for­mer Petrotrin chair­man Wil­fred Es­pinet said that was nev­er his rec­om­men­da­tion.

“Can you tell us if we would be pur­chas­ing fu­el from them in USD or lo­cal cur­ren­cy? The Min­is­ter of Fi­nance blamed the clo­sure of the re­fin­ery for the short­age of forex in our coun­try.

“Would we pay them USD for the byprod­uct bi­tu­men which is used to re­pair our roads,” Bartlett asked.

Fyz­abad Cham­ber pres­i­dent Ang­ie Jairam is hope­ful ef­fec­tive and prop­er due dili­gence was done for the se­lec­tion of Oan­do to take con­trol of the re­fin­ery.

“I am hop­ing that there will be a ro­bust lo­cal con­tent el­e­ment present here, where­by past em­ploy­ees will be em­ployed, con­trac­tors, sup­pli­ers, and oth­er ser­vice providers will be giv­en op­por­tu­ni­ties by the re­fin­ery’s new op­er­a­tors, and I hope to see eco­nom­ic pros­per­i­ty re­turn,” she said.