Senior Reporter
andrea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt
There are mixed reactions to the statements made by Energy Minister Stuart in his article entitled “The truth about Petrotrin and its restructuring”.
Young’s article was responding to commentator Ralph Maraj in the Sunday Express newspaper of April 28, under the headline “Shed Your Intellectual Laziness”.
Responding to the article, energy expert Anthony Paul told the Guardian yesterday that while the minister gave some facts on the now defunct Petrotrin, there was also some misleading representation of facts in there.
Paul said what Young did was conflate the loan and the operational loss of the company.
He noted that a large portion of the loan came about, as a result of building new plants at the refinery and that the project management was very poor.
“There was a huge cost overrun on that plant, which had nothing to do with the operation of the facility. The minister did not go into the details of what pushed up operating costs and the reason why we were losing money is that the plant was not efficient. What that means is that the Government was buying crude at a high price from a long distance and shipping it a long way, which pushed the cost up. There was crude nearby in Venezuela that the Government could have gotten, instead of the Russians,” the energy expert said.
Paul outlined that a big part of the loan is that the Government was taking it to build the plant to make money, but it could not make money.
“There were some things that were true, but the minister said some things misrepresented the truth and other facts were left out,” Paul added.
However, another energy expert Gregory Mc Guire gave a different spin and said the minister’s response to Ralph Maraj was highly professional and supported by indisputable facts.
Mc Guire said hopefully it would have cleared up some false narratives that continue to gain popularity as they are being propagated by people who should know better.
These include: that Petrotrin was closed down; that it was a net earner of foreign exchange, and that the refinery was profitable.
He noted that Young has reiterated the truth about Petrotrin and the relative success of Heritage as a standalone production company, free of the burden of the loss-making refinery.
Also weighing in on the matter was United National Congress (UNC) chairman David Lee, who described the article as “same old story without any benefits presented six years later.”
Lee highlighted that the minister talks about the profitability of Heritage Petroleum, but Petrotrin’s exploration arm was always profitable.
“He talks about Paria’s success, but Petrotrin was a net earner of forex from the sale of locally produced fuel compared to Paria which must import fuel. What Minister Young must tell the population is why up to this day thousands of Petrotrin and fenceline workers are still unemployed as this Government has never revitalised or assisted fenceline communities.
“Six years later, citizens will not buy Minister Young’s excuses that these moves saved T&T from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) or saved the economy because if this Government had this country’s interest at heart, it would have kept the refinery operating as a going concern,” he stressed.
And, executive vice president of the Oilfield Workers Trade Union Ernesto Kesar questioned if the administration saw the closure of the refinery as a good decision, and why every chance the minister gets he keeps defending the position.
“If you did something correctly then why are you always quick to defend yourself? In my opinion, anyone who is always hasty to respond is not sure of themselves. The OWTU will provide a comprehensive response in the upcoming weeks,” Kesar concluded.
In the article, published on Sunday, the minister said the restructuring of Petrotrin and closure of the refinery has been a success.
“Not only did we avoid calls on the treasury to make payments of the long- and short-term US dollar debt, but we also managed to secure refinancing of the US$850 million debt, not once but twice, at competitive rates of interest and without any government guarantee,” Young said.