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Thursday, July 17, 2025

Expert hopes for jobs and forex boost from refinery reopening

by

17 days ago
20250630
Former Petrotrin refinery expert Gowtam Maharaj 

Former Petrotrin refinery expert Gowtam Maharaj 

KRISTIAN DE SILVA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

For­mer Petrotrin re­fin­ery ex­pert Gow­tam Ma­haraj says he hopes at least one train at the shut­tered Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery can be restart­ed with­in a year, cre­at­ing more jobs and bol­ster­ing T&T’s for­eign ex­change re­serves.

Ma­haraj, who has worked on all 26 plants for al­most three decades, spoke to Guardian Me­dia ex­clu­sive­ly as the Gov­ern­ment as­sess­es the re­open­ing of the re­fin­ery which was shut down by the Kei­th-Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion in 2018, leav­ing more than 5,000 work­ers on the bread­line.

Ma­haraj, who toured the re­fin­ery with­in the past year, said re­open­ing the fa­cil­i­ty will boost eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty through­out south Trinidad. He ex­pressed hope that with­in one year at least one train com­pris­ing of the con­tin­u­ous cat­a­lyst re­gen­er­a­tion (CCR) plant or the iso­meri­sa­tion plants would come on­stream to pro­duce gaso­line.

His com­ments come as Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar an­nounced the for­ma­tion of a tech­ni­cal com­mit­tee to ex­plore the re­open­ing of the re­fin­ery.

While the prospect of restart­ing is vi­able, Ma­haraj stressed that safe­ty was of para­mount im­por­tance, so com­pre­hen­sive in­tegri­ty test­ing must come first.

“One can­not give any em­pir­i­cal in­for­ma­tion in terms of what can be start­ed at this par­tic­u­lar time, be­cause an in­tegri­ty as­sess­ment is what will de­ter­mine that,” he said.

These as­sess­ments will in­volve a bat­tery of non-de­struc­tive test­ing meth­ods, in­clud­ing X-ray, ul­tra­son­ic, and phased-ar­ray analy­sis—to ver­i­fy the safe­ty and re­li­a­bil­i­ty of ves­sels, com­pres­sors, columns, and pip­ing that have en­dured high tem­per­a­tures and pres­sures. Ma­haraj not­ed that some of the re­fin­ery’s in­fra­struc­ture, par­tic­u­lar­ly units like the CCR and iso­meri­sa­tion plants, are rel­a­tive­ly new and well-po­si­tioned to lead the phased restart.

“For­tu­nate­ly, some of these fair­ly new plants may be the very ones that are need­ed to start up to sup­ply lo­cal gaso­line de­mand. That’s a bit of good news,” he ex­plained.

He said the prospect of restart­ing even part of the re­fin­ery is sig­nif­i­cant. Ma­haraj es­ti­mates lo­cal de­mand for diesel and gaso­line to be over 20,000 bar­rels per day, a sup­ply that T&T cur­rent­ly im­ports, de­plet­ing for­eign ex­change.

He said a func­tion­ing Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery would al­so en­able T&T to re­claim its his­tor­i­cal­ly dom­i­nant po­si­tion as a sup­pli­er to Caribbean na­tions.

“We held the re­gion­al mar­ket, and no­body could have tak­en that from us,” Ma­haraj em­pha­sised. “We are lo­gis­ti­cal­ly in the best place ... and we blend to meet each is­land’s ex­act spec­i­fi­ca­tion. They ap­pre­ci­at­ed that—and stayed with us.”

He point­ed to re­cent glob­al dy­nam­ics, such as re­duced heavy oil out­put from Venezuela, Cana­da and Mex­i­co due to sanc­tions and tar­iffs, as a win­dow of op­por­tu­ni­ty for T&T’s fu­el oils to fetch a near-pre­mi­um price.

“Mar­gins for that are fair­ly good. So I sup­port any de­ci­sion to restart the Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery. We have dom­i­nat­ed the re­gion­al mar­ket, and we have the po­ten­tial to con­tin­ue to do so,” he added.

De­spite this op­ti­mism, Ma­haraj un­der­scored the chal­lenges ahead. He said com­po­nents may need to be re­placed en­tire­ly de­pend­ing on in­tegri­ty test re­sults, and many parts will have to be sourced in­ter­na­tion­al­ly from orig­i­nal equip­ment man­u­fac­tur­ers. That process, along with retro­fitting, pro­cure­ment, and re-cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, could de­lay full-scale op­er­a­tions, he ex­plained.

Still, Ma­haraj in­sist­ed the lo­cal tal­ent pool re­mains ro­bust and ex­pe­ri­enced enough to man­age such a project.

“We have processed crudes from as far as Rus­sia and Brazil. Our teams know how to adapt,” he ex­plained.

He ex­pressed hope that the new com­mit­tee will en­gage in a com­pre­hen­sive in­tegri­ty as­sess­ment of all crit­i­cal sys­tems, pro­vide clear start­up time­lines based on test re­sults, es­tab­lish a crude sourc­ing strat­e­gy, in­clud­ing blends of lo­cal and im­port­ed crudes as well as mar­ket­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion plans for re­gion­al fu­el sales.

Ma­haraj said hun­dreds of mil­lions of US dol­lars will be need­ed to ful­ly restart the re­fin­ery and the com­mit­tee must al­so pro­vide a cap­i­tal bud­get and pro­cure­ment sched­ule for parts and equip­ment.

He al­so flagged the pres­ence of a brand-new ul­tra-low sul­fur diesel (ULSD) plant at the site as a key as­set. Though un­used to date, he said this plant could be retro­fit­ted and brought on­line with the right in­vest­ment—of­fer­ing a high-de­mand diesel prod­uct on the glob­al mar­ket.

“There’s good news in there. It’s not all a junk­yard,” Ma­haraj said.

“This is an eco­nom­ic op­por­tu­ni­ty, and it’s one we’re equipped to take on now that we have a Prime Min­is­ter and En­er­gy Min­is­ter who have the po­lit­i­cal will to re­vi­talise our re­fin­ery op­er­a­tions.”

He said en­er­gy self-suf­fi­cien­cy was need­ed and the geopo­lit­i­cal ten­sions in the Mid­dle East pre­sent­ed op­por­tu­ni­ties for re­fin­ing crude.


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