Ke­jan Haynes

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad Bisses­sar promised the labour move­ment on Labour Day 2025 she will es­tab­lish a com­mit­tee to ex­plore re­open­ing the Guaracara re­fin­ery.

“It is a com­mit­ment we made — we will con­sid­er and ex­plore what we can do to open that re­fin­ery,” Per­sad Bisses­sar said. “We have agreed to es­tab­lish a com­mit­tee to de­vel­op a strat­e­gy to re­ac­ti­vate the Guaracara re­fin­ery. Your rep­re­sen­ta­tives will be on that com­mit­tee to­geth­er with our ex­perts, but we have to go in there and as­sess what is there.”

“Do I have your per­mis­sion to set up this com­mit­tee to ex­plore the strate­gies for open­ing that re­fin­ery, re­open­ing?” she asked the crowd. 

She said she would meet with An­cel Ro­get with­in 10 days to fi­nalise the com­mit­tee’s for­ma­tion and ex­pect­ed a re­port with­in two months.

“Re­mem­ber, al­ways, good things come for those who wait. I gave you the com­mit­ment that we re­con­sid­er and work with your rep­re­sen­ta­tives to make sure the best in ful­fill­ing our work­ers’ agen­da,” she added.

Per­sad Bisses­sar de­scribed her back­ground: “I am not the 1%. I am one of you. I have come just like you from the work­ing class, and some­times no work­ing class be­cause you had no job. I un­der­stand what it is be­cause I’ve been there, done that.”

Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gies and Tech­nolo­gies Ltd, led by An­cel Ro­get, had pre­vi­ous­ly made sev­er­al bids to ac­quire the Guaracara re­fin­ery.

The com­pa­ny won the bid in 2019 but failed to se­cure the nec­es­sary fi­nanc­ing.

Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials re­ject­ed Pa­tri­ot­ic’s pro­pos­als be­cause the com­pa­ny could not over­come a US$500 mil­lion lien on the re­fin­ery.

Pa­tri­ot­ic’s fi­nal pro­pos­al, which ad­dressed the lien is­sue with­out re­quir­ing gov­ern­ment funds, was not ac­cept­ed.

Then Min­is­ter of En­er­gy Stu­art Young said doc­u­ments sub­mit­ted by Pa­tri­ot­ic to prove fi­nanc­ing were fraud­u­lent.

Young said the gov­ern­ment’s eval­u­a­tion com­mit­tee found that Pa­tri­ot­ic could not meet the fi­nan­cial re­quire­ments, in­clud­ing sub­mit­ting a fake doc­u­ment claim­ing a US$1.5 bil­lion cash wire trans­fer.