While en­er­gy ex­perts agree that a Cab­i­net-ap­point­ed eval­u­a­tion team should en­sure that the next op­er­a­tor for the Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery has the fi­nan­cial and tech­ni­cal re­sources to re­sume op­er­a­tions, ac­cess to crude oil should not be an is­sue.

Speak­ing at the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment Sports and Fam­i­ly in San Fer­nan­do last Sun­day, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley an­nounced that the Cab­i­net will in­stall a team to as­sess bids sub­mit­ted in a month. He said the Gov­ern­ment should be able to tell the coun­try whether it has an op­er­a­tor for the old Petrotrin as­set by the end of Au­gust.

He said they were look­ing at po­ten­tial op­er­a­tors with crude oil that T&T did not have.

For­mer min­is­ter of en­er­gy and en­er­gy af­fairs Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan said T&T has to be very mind­ful when choos­ing the best bid­der. She said the pre­ferred bid­der should have the req­ui­site ex­per­tise to take the plants out of the moth­balled state they were in for six years and make them op­er­a­tional in the short­est pos­si­ble time.

Seep­er­sad-Bachan said they must al­so have the req­ui­site fi­nances be­cause re­sump­tion will be a cap­i­tal-in­ten­sive project.

“It has been moth­balled for six years. When the Gov­ern­ment eval­u­ates, it should not lim­it it­self to on­ly bid­ders that have eq­ui­ty in crude be­cause we have seen suc­cess sto­ries around the world about re­finer­ies that do not own crude. They have strate­gic part­ner­ships around the world,” Seep­er­sad-Bachan said.

She said re­search would show re­finer­ies had healthy mar­gins in the last few years. When eval­u­at­ing, she said, analy­ses can­not be on a short-term ba­sis, as any one-year pe­ri­od can­not paint an ac­cu­rate pic­ture of a re­fin­ery.

Dur­ing Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU) Pres­i­dent Gen­er­al An­cel Ro­get’s Labour Day speech, he said his or­gan­i­sa­tion would not al­low any­one to re­sume op­er­a­tion at the re­fin­ery with­out its in­volve­ment.

The OW­TU’s Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gies and Tech­nolo­gies Com­pa­ny is one of the bid­ders for the re­fin­ery. How­ev­er, Row­ley re­ject­ed Ro­get’s de­mands, say­ing ac­tion on the re­fin­ery would not have any­thing to do with mis­chie­vous trou­ble­mak­ers who be­lieve the Gov­ern­ment will sit back and take non­sen­si­cal talk.

He said one union leader was singing ca­lyp­so, send­ing word for him to say that the Gov­ern­ment would not be al­lowed to dis­pose of the re­fin­ery with­out his and his friends’ per­mis­sion.

“When you own your own re­fin­ery, the Gov­ern­ment will not in­ter­fere with it. But the re­fin­ery owned by the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go, un­til you are in the Gov­ern­ment or the prime min­is­ter, go and sing your ca­lyp­so to your friends else­where and stop talk­ing stu­pid­ness,” Row­ley said.

Seep­er­sad-Bachan said Ro­get and Pa­tri­ot­ic must be treat­ed sep­a­rate­ly, like every oth­er bid­der. She said the eval­u­a­tion team must analyse bids to get the high­est re­turns in the coun­try’s in­ter­ests. She said the re­sump­tion of the re­fin­ery was not just about dol­lars but about the em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties and spin-off in­dus­tries.

Seep­er­sad-Bachan said Petrotrin had trained peo­ple for the in­dus­try, and af­ter the clo­sure, many went abroad. She is hope­ful that the new op­er­a­tor can at­tract them to the re­fin­ery.

Mean­while, Strat­e­gy and En­er­gy Con­sul­tant at VSL Con­sul­tants, Gre­go­ry McGuire, said the pre­ferred bid­der should have ac­cess to cap­i­tal to fi­nance the re­fin­ery re­fur­bish­ment and up­grades. He said the cur­rent state of the re­fin­ery would not be op­er­a­ble as there was al­ways a need to up­grade plants to pro­duce prod­ucts more ef­fi­cient­ly, more price-com­pet­i­tive, and bet­ter suit­ed for the mar­ket.

He said the pre­ferred bid­der should have the tech­ni­cal ca­pac­i­ty to re­cruit ex­pe­ri­enced and ca­pa­ble per­son­nel.

“We do have in Trinidad and To­ba­go a whole cadre of ex­pe­ri­enced work­ers, and they can draw on that, but in terms of the new tech­nolo­gies avail­able for re­fin­ing, the pre­ferred bid­der ought to have that,” McGuire said.

His third cri­te­ri­on was ac­cess to ex­port mar­kets or a dis­tri­b­u­tion net­work to get re­fined prod­ucts out seam­less­ly.

Fourth­ly, they must have ac­cess to crude oil, which he says is al­ways read­i­ly avail­able. While Seep­er­sad-Bachan be­lieves the Gov­ern­ment can al­so seek a part­ner for the re­fin­ery, McGuire says the re­fin­ery should be in the pri­vate sec­tor’s hands.

“Gov­ern­ments in Trinidad and To­ba­go have had over 100 years to get the re­fin­ery right. Even if we were to go back to 1974, when we first ac­quired the Trin­toc re­fin­ery, and lat­er on, in­to the ‘80s, the Tex­a­co re­fin­ery, we have had forty-some­thing years-plus to get it right, and we have not suc­ceed­ed in get­ting it right for a host of rea­sons.”