Gail Alexan­der

Ready, will­ing, able – and very hap­py that Gov­ern­ment has giv­en an Oc­to­ber dead­line for the clo­sure of the Guaracara re­fin­ery pur­chase deal with Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gies and Tech­nolo­gies Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed.

That was Pa­tri­ot­ic head An­cel Ro­get’s po­si­tion yes­ter­day on Gov­ern­ment’s dis­clo­sure that the end of Oc­to­ber is the dead­line for clo­sure the of ne­go­ti­a­tions re­gard­ing Pa­tri­ot­ic’s bid to buy the Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley gave the dead­line at Mon­day’s 2021 Bud­get fo­rums dis­cus­sions. He said if the deal isn’t com­plet­ed by then, oth­er op­tions would have to be sought. Row­ley em­pha­sized the dis­cus­sions on the deal aren’t open-end­ed.

Ro­get re­spond­ed yes­ter­day, “We are ready to go.....our for­eign con­sor­tium part­ners are al­so elat­ed that a dead­line has been giv­en.”

“We’ve been ready to sign since May, Ju­ly. Peo­ple must re­call that we’d even called for the deal to be closed be­fore the Au­gust 10 Gen­er­al Elec­tion. So we’re glad of the ur­gency now - and we are ready.”

“We see the Prime Min­is­ter’s an­nounce­ment in a very pos­i­tive light and we’re al­so hap­py that peo­ple – busi­ness groups - are ex­press­ing in­ter­est on the mat­ter since this means it’s rec­og­nized this pur­chase will ben­e­fit T&T.”

Pa­tri­ot­ic is now await­ing the As­sets Pur­chase Agree­ment set­ting con­di­tions for the com­pa­ny to sat­is­fy, in­clud­ing con­di­tions un­der which the sale will be done.

The doc­u­ment will state Gov­ern­ment’s agree­ment on sell­ing.

Ear­li­er in the year, a Gov­ern­ment team had been put to work with Pa­tri­ot­ic on as­pects of the As­set Pur­chase Agree­ment. At­tor­neys for Pa­tri­ot­ic and the state were in­volved in deal­ing with this up to af­ter the elec­tion.

Doc­u­ments were ex­changed on as­pects up to last Fri­day and the state has to re­spond to Pa­tri­ot­ic on its sub­mis­sions, En­er­gy Min­istry of­fi­cials con­firmed.

Once the agree­ment is signed Ro­get said, Pa­tri­ot­ic’s in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners are on stand­by to pro­vide all con­di­tions re­quired by the agree­ment, and par­ties can then move to clo­sure in a short space of time....”Hav­ing sat­is­fied all con­di­tions which we’re ready to do,” Ro­get added.

“We’re on course with our part to en­sure it comes through.”

“When that hap­pens we’ll be­gin mo­bi­liza­tion to put peo­ple to work in the re­fur­bish­ment ex­er­cise where for­eign ex­change will be in­ject­ed in­to T&T via this process even be­fore the re­fin­ery starts.”

Re­fin­ery de­te­ri­o­rat­ed

Say­ing the re­fin­ery has de­te­ri­o­rat­ed over time, he added, “Re­pairs will be nec­es­sary as we have to en­sure the re­fin­ery is re­fur­bished and pro­vides re­li­able ser­vice to run for some time be­fore the turn­around be­gins since we have to guar­an­tee lo­cal and for­eign cus­tomers re­li­able fu­el sup­ply.”

Ro­get said the ma­jor re­pairs will cost half a bil­lion US dol­lars, “And that’s where small, medi­um and large con­trac­tors and oth­er busi­ness­es will ben­e­fit - scaf­fold­ers, en­gi­neers, elec­tri­cians, re­fur­bish­ment of as­sets on lo­ca­tion.”

“We project 4,500 will be in­volved in the re­fur­bish­ment in­clud­ing tank work - we’ll be putting a new face on the old Petrotrin. This in it­self is part of T&T his­to­ry.”

“Plus, those 4,500 peo­ple will be pay­ing tax­es al­so so this will be a boost for the econ­o­my. And we’ll be rein­tro­duc­ing an ap­pren­tice­ship pool to train peo­ple al­so.”

Ro­get re­it­er­at­ed the new com­pa­ny will be run by an ex­pert for­eign man­age­ment team - not him or the union.

“That team has the com­pe­ten­cy in re­fin­ery ac­qui­si­tion and run­ning turn­around op­er­a­tions. There will al­so be peo­ple from Pa­tri­ot­ic un­der­study­ing the sys­tem al­so but the bulk of the work­force – labour­ers, welders, fab­ri­ca­tors, scaf­fold­ers etc- will be drawn from lo­cal num­bers.”

Ro­get was asked about the im­pact on the project by de­creased de­mand for oil/en­er­gy sup­ply fol­low­ing the hit by the COVID-19 on glob­al move­ment. He as­sured Pa­tri­ot­ic’s for­eign part­ners have fac­tored this in­to plan­ning.

“There’s still a strong ap­petite for this project even with re­duced cur­rent­ly. Gov­ern­ment should fa­cil­i­tate an am­i­ca­ble clos­ing of this ma­jor un­der­tak­ing which can as­sist many ar­eas in­clud­ing lo­cal busi­ness.”

At this point where at­tor­neys are han­dling the process, Ro­get urged that Gov­ern­ment “stay true to the com­mit­ment to make those as­sets avail­able as per the re­peat­ed com­mit­ment by Fi­nance and En­er­gy min­is­ters and oth­ers - this can work. We’ve sat­is­fied cri­te­ria since the process be­gan. Our for­eign part­ners have ac­quired re­finer­ies all over the world. They’re high­ly com­pe­tent.”

It’s been re­port­ed the con­sor­tium com­pris­es UK/US and oth­er ex­perts in le­gal, fi­nan­cial, mar­ket and re­fin­ery ac­qui­si­tion. Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert didn’t an­swer mes­sages on the process.