Cur­tis Williams

Quan­ten Con­sor­tium LLC is the pre­ferred bid­der for the Pointe-a-Pierre Re­fin­ery ac­cord­ing to high­ly placed sources in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter and Trinidad Pe­tro­le­um Hold­ing Ltd.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley an­nounced in the par­lia­ment that TPHL had iden­ti­fied a pre­ferred bid­der but re­fused to give any fur­ther in­for­ma­tion on the name of the com­pa­ny.

The Busi­ness Guardian can con­firm that it is the US com­pa­ny with ex­ec­u­tive of­fices in San Jose, Cal­i­for­nia, En­gi­neer­ing Of­fices in Hous­ton, Texas, and Op­er­a­tions Of­fices in Lu­an­da, An­go­la, and Soyo, An­go­la.

Mul­ti­ple sources have con­firmed to the Busi­ness Guardian that Quan­ten is the pre­ferred bid­der and is in dis­cus­sions with TPHL with a hope to get­ting ac­cess to the re­fin­ery.

The Busi­ness Guardian reached out the com­pa­ny but it de­clined to give any de­tails at this stage.

The fol­low­ing ques­tions were sent to Quan­ten:

Can Quan­ten con­firm it is in dis­cus­sions with the T&T gov­ern­ment for the pur­chase or lease of the Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery in Trinidad?

When does Quan­ten ex­pect the process to be com­plet­ed?

What’s the pro­posed size of in­vest­ment?

Where is the crude to be sourced for the re­fin­ery?

Al­so what is the es­ti­mat­ed time for get­ting the re­fin­ery up and run­ning should a deal be made?

​It re­spond­ed say­ing, “Hel­lo Cur­tis and thank you for your in­quiry. How­ev­er, at this mo­ment in time we re­serve com­ment.”

Ac­cord­ing to its web­site, Quan­ten Con­sor­tium group of com­pa­nies fo­cus on de­vel­op­ing trans­for­ma­tion­al projects in emerg­ing mar­ket coun­tries - these are in­di­vid­ual or se­ries of in­ter­ven­tions that sup­port deep, sys­temic, and sus­tain­able change with the po­ten­tial for large-scale im­pact in an area of ma­jor de­vel­op­ment chal­lenge.

A sis­ter com­pa­ny, Quan­ten Con­sor­tium Aru­ba, LLC is cur­rent­ly en­gaged in the re­fur­bish­ment, up­grade and op­er­a­tions of the Aru­ba Re­fin­ery.

Jeff Mey­ers is Quan­ten’s man­ag­ing part­ner. He is al­so founder and board chair­man of Quan­ten, LLC and Quan­ten Elec­tri­cal Con­trac­tor, Inc. (QEC), which pro­vides elec­tri­cal ser­vices for large com­mer­cial and in­dus­tri­al projects. QEC col­lab­o­rates with Pa­cif­ic Gas & Elec­tric (PG&E) util­i­ty in the USA in projects in­volv­ing grid con­nec­tion, and retro­fitting build­ings with en­er­gy sav­ing so­lu­tions util­is­ing in­cen­tive funds as des­ig­nat­ed by the State of Cal­i­for­nia.

Quan­ten Con­sor­tium An­go­la, LLC will build, own and op­er­ate the Soyo Re­fin­ery which will have the ca­pac­i­ty to process 100,000 bar­rels of crude per day.

The com­pa­ny said its strat­e­gy is to build a “Deep Con­ver­sion” re­fin­ery with max­i­mum up­time, which pro­duces con­sumer ready end prod­ucts such as gaso­line, diesel, jet fu­el, and as­phalt, and is pro­tect­ed from ad­verse geopo­lit­i­cal events.

“We have the flex­i­bil­i­ty to process a va­ri­ety of crude, de­liv­er con­sumer ready end prod­ucts and op­er­ate an eco-friend­ly re­fin­ery that meets the most strin­gent pol­lu­tion and sul­phur con­tent re­quire­ments. We have re­dun­dan­cies and flex­i­bil­i­ty in the sup­ply of crude oil, equip­ment, long lead items, crit­i­cal items, spare parts, and re­fined prod­ucts des­ti­na­tion and cus­tomers.”

The Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery was moth-balled in No­vem­ber 2018 and since then Gov­ern­ment has been look­ing for a com­pa­ny to ac­quire or lease it. Ne­go­ti­a­tions with the Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union’s Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gies, which had ex­pressed an in­ter­est, col­lapsed in Jan­u­ary 2021.

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