Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

The Op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) has not­ed that Wednes­day’s an­nounce­ment of the bid by TT Iron Steel (TTIS) to ac­quire the Point Lisas iron and steel plant came im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter Tues­day’s word of the lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tion date.

And the UNC says it will be mon­i­tor­ing de­vel­op­ments con­cern­ing the re­open­ing of the fa­cil­i­ty close­ly.

UNC chair­man Dave Tan­coo stat­ed this on Wednes­day af­ter it was an­nounced that the TTIS had signed a sale and pur­chase agree­ment with Christo­pher Kelshall, the liq­uida­tor of Arcelor­Mit­tal Point Lisas, to ac­quire the iron and steel plant in the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate.

TTIS stat­ed that com­ple­tion of the trans­ac­tion is sub­ject to ap­proval by the Gov­ern­ment and the project will cre­ate 1,000-plus jobs dur­ing the re­fur­bish­ment and start-up phase. When ful­ly op­er­a­tional, the plant will cre­ate long term em­ploy­ment for 500 skilled work­ers and in­di­rect­ly cre­ate many more jobs, TTIS added.

UNC chair­man Tan­coo said, “As a pa­tri­ot­ic cit­i­zen I wel­come the en­try of any busi­ness ven­ture that will pro­vide a source of em­ploy­ment for cit­i­zens, gen­er­ate for­eign ex­change and con­tribute to the do­mes­tic econ­o­my.

“The promise of a more en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly pro­duc­tion of iron and steel through the com­pa­ny’s stat­ed com­mit­ment to move to­wards ‘green hy­dro­gen’ based pro­duc­tion ‘in the com­ing years’ is very promis­ing.

Tan­coo added, “The dis­dain with which the Gov­ern­ment treat­ed the in­dus­try pre­vi­ous­ly, cul­mi­nat­ed in the ex­it of Arcelor­Mit­tal and the clo­sure of the in­dus­try to the detri­ment of the thou­sands of di­rect and in­di­rect em­ploy­ees, and the equal­ly rep­re­hen­si­ble clo­sure of Petrotrin had se­vere­ly trau­ma­tised the com­mu­ni­ties of South Trinidad in ad­di­tion to the na­tion­al econ­o­my.

“More re­cent­ly the un­der­min­ing and clo­sure of the lo­cal­ly owned and op­er­at­ed scrap iron in­dus­try sug­gests a Gov­ern­ment will­ing to use its au­thor­i­ty to shut down busi­ness ven­tures un­less they were will­ing to ad­here to ar­ro­gance of Gov­ern­ment’s whim and fan­cy.”

Tan­coo added said that it was not lost on the pop­u­la­tion that the re­lease came im­me­di­ate­ly fol­low­ing the Prime Min­is­ter’s forced an­nounce­ment of the lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions and dur­ing a time when the coun­try is as­sess­ing the abysmal per­for­mance of the PNM gov­ern­ment.

“I re­call a sim­i­lar an­nounce­ment re­lat­ing to the union’s ac­qui­si­tion of Petrotrin, which turned out to be a farce,” said Tan­coo.

“I al­so re­call the fi­as­co in re­gard to the PNM Cab­i­net be­ing forced to can­cel a deal with a ho­tel chain af­ter the pub­lic was made aware of the con­ces­sions be­ing se­cret­ly award­ed.

“We will be pay­ing close at­ten­tion to this de­vel­op­ment and will con­tin­ue to hold the gov­ern­ment to ac­count at every step,” Tan­coo said.

In its news re­lease on Wednes­day, TT Iron point­ed out that the Point Lisas iron and steel plant utilis­es low-car­bon emis­sion tech­nolo­gies for steel pro­duc­tion which it be­lieves are crit­i­cal to de­car­bonise the glob­al steel in­dus­try.

The com­pa­ny not­ed that greater than 70 per cent of steel glob­al­ly is made us­ing coal-based blast fur­naces which emit rough­ly two tonnes of car­bon diox­ide per tonne of steel pro­duced.

The com­pa­ny said, “The Point Lisas Iron and Steel Plant is based on elec­tric arc fur­naces and di­rect re­duc­tion us­ing nat­ur­al gas, a green process with less than half of the emis­sions from a coal-based steel­mak­ing fa­cil­i­ty. While this process is used in less than 10 per cent of steel mills glob­al­ly we be­lieve it is the fu­ture of steel­mak­ing,” said the com­pa­ny.

“Ini­tial­ly, TT Iron in­tends to restart (1) Di­rect Re­duced Iron unit #3 (“DR3”)—a MIDREX DRI unit built in 1999 with 1.35 mil­lion tons per year ca­pac­i­ty and (2) the Elec­tric Arc Fur­nace based melt shop and at­tached rolling mill. TT Iron in­tends to pro­duce val­ue-added steel prod­ucts for ex­port and for lo­cal con­sump­tion with­in Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

TT Iron not­ed that the fa­cil­i­ty at Point Lisas can be fur­ther de­car­bonised by sub­sti­tut­ing nat­ur­al gas with green hy­dro­gen and we are work­ing close­ly with part­ners in Trinidad to de­vel­op a lo­cal green hy­dro­gen sup­ply chain.

“Af­ter it has been restart­ed, the fa­cil­i­ty will al­so be the largest re­cy­cling op­er­a­tion in the Caribbean con­sum­ing scrap and waste tyres gen­er­at­ed in Trinidad and To­ba­go to make steel prod­ucts,” ac­cord­ing to TT Iron.