KEVON FELMINE

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Al­though he ac­cused Op­po­si­tion leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar of cre­at­ing mis­chief, Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice (MSJ) leader David Ab­du­lah wants the Gov­ern­ment to come clean on why it failed to ne­go­ti­ate the sale of Petrotrin’s Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery to Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gies and Tech­nolo­gies Co Ltd.Dur­ing a vir­tu­al me­dia con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, Ab­du­lah said there are re­ports that Trinidad Pe­tro­le­um Hold­ings Ltd (TPHL) used the as­sets of the Guaracara Re­fin­ing Com­pa­ny (Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery) and Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Co Ltd as se­cu­ri­ty for the re­fi­nanc­ing of loans in­her­it­ed by Petrotrin.“Was per­mis­sion or ap­proval sought for a state com­pa­ny to in­cur these debts and was it ob­tained? If so, how did the Cab­i­net agree to sell to Pa­tri­ot­ic when it knew what was tak­ing place when the as­sets were mort­gaged?” Ab­du­lah asked. TPHL is the hold­ing com­pa­ny formed in the af­ter­math of Petrotrin’s clo­sure in 2018. Its sub­sidiaries in­clude Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny, Guaracara, Paria and Petrotrin (lega­cy com­pa­ny).Short­ly af­ter the clo­sure of Petrotrin, the Gov­ern­ment said it would of­fer the Oil­field Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU) the re­fin­ery at a prefer­able rate. The OW­TU then in­cor­po­rat­ed Pa­tri­ot­ic to bid for the re­fin­ery and was cho­sen as the pre­ferred bid­der. Pa­tri­ot­ic of­fered an up­front pay­ment of US$700 mil­lion but af­ter months of dis­cus­sions, the ne­go­ti­a­tions failed when Gov­ern­ment re­ject­ed their lat­est pro­pos­al. How­ev­er, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­e­ly has since or­dered a re­view of the pro­pos­al.

Speak­ing about the lat­est events sur­round­ing the deal, Ab­du­lah said: “The Gov­ern­ment, you have to come clean with what you knew and did not know with re­spect to the liens and mort­gages. Are there oth­er loans tak­en out with these as­sets to use as col­lat­er­al?” 
Dur­ing a Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) vir­tu­al po­lit­i­cal meet­ing on Mon­day night, Per­sad-Bisses­sar ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of trick­ing the OW­TU with a ne­go­ti­a­tion while it could not legal­ly sell the as­sets. She said the re­fin­ery and port as­sets were part of a mort­gage for US$1.17 bil­lion.  
Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so claimed that in 2020, Pa­tri­ot­ic de­creased its of­fer for the re­fin­ery and port as­sets by US$200 mil­lion. She said Pa­tri­ot­ic al­so asked the Gov­ern­ment to cov­er $26 mil­lion in fees.
 Re­spond­ing to those claims, Ab­du­lah said Per­sad-Bisses­sar was, in fact, try­ing to scut­tle any pos­si­ble deal be­tween Pa­tri­ot­ic and the Gov­ern­ment. He re­called that the UNC was al­ways against the sale of the re­fin­ery, ac­knowl­edg­ing the pre­vi­ous com­men­tary from Pointe-a-Pierre MP Dr David Lee and Oropouche East MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, who felt it should re­main un­der state con­trol.
How­ev­er, he urged the Gov­ern­ment not to be fright­ened by the UNC, as the par­ty does not hold the na­tion’s in­ter­est. Not­ing Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert’s rev­e­la­tion that the Gov­ern­ment has to pay Paria US$20 mil­lion for im­port­ing fu­el, he said this would change once the re­fin­ery restarts. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, he said cit­i­zens would ben­e­fit from a Pa­tri­ot­ic-op­er­at­ed re­fin­ery.
“Do not get spooked. Con­tin­ue the ne­go­ti­a­tion process with Pa­tri­ot­ic. That is the best and on­ly way to get eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ties go­ing with the restart of the re­fin­ery and port fa­cil­i­ties,” Ab­du­lah urged the Gov­ern­ment.