Joel Julien

in George­town, Guyana

T&T’s moth­balled re­fin­ery in Pointe-a-Pierre does not fit in­to Guyana’s plans for its en­er­gy fu­ture, that coun­try’s Nat­ur­al Re­sources Min­is­ter Vick­ram Bhar­rat has said.

In fact, Bhar­rat says Guyana is ac­tive­ly con­sid­er­ing con­struct­ing its own re­fin­ery, as it aims to be­come self-suf­fi­cient when it comes to en­er­gy.

“We’re look­ing to build our own re­fin­ery in coun­try,” Bhar­rat said in an in­ter­view with News Room Guyana fol­low­ing a pan­el dis­cus­sion at the in­ter­na­tion­al en­er­gy con­fer­ence here at the Guyana Mar­riott yes­ter­day, as he ad­dressed over­tures made by T&T Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley on Tues­day, for re­gion­al coun­tries to look at the Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery as an op­tion.

“We are try­ing to en­sure that we are self-suf­fi­cient in terms of en­er­gy, so that’s why we are mov­ing to­wards set­ting up the re­fin­ery in coun­try,” he added,.

Bhar­rat said that the gov­ern­ment has al­ready is­sued a Re­quest for Pro­pos­als for a pri­vate­ly-owned 30,000-bar­rel-per-day oil re­fin­ery in East Berbice-Coren­tyne and that a de­ci­sion will soon be made on the nine pro­pos­als re­ceived so far.

Ac­cord­ing to Bhar­rat, Guyana cur­rent­ly re­quires 15,000 bar­rels of oil per day and with the grow­ing en­er­gy de­mand, it is be­lieved that the re­fin­ery will be suf­fi­cient.

Al­though Guyana is not con­sid­er­ing the moth­balled Petrotrin re­fin­ery at Pointe-a-Pierre, that will have no im­pact on the re­la­tion­ship be­tween the two coun­tries, he said.

“Trinidad has the ex­pe­ri­ence and the ex­per­tise as well too and quite hon­est­ly, we haven’t been fo­cus­ing too much on gas,” he said.

“We have spent a lot of our time on oil, right­ly so, be­cause of the price of oil (but) be­cause of the way the world is go­ing, the de­mand for oil might not be long last­ing but gas is seen as a tran­si­tion­al fu­el,” he added.

On the open­ing day of the four-day con­fer­ence on Tues­day, PM Row­ley pro­mot­ed the Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery as a vi­able op­tion for any­one in­ter­est­ed in a re­fin­ery.

Row­ley said the heavy de­pen­dence on im­port­ed en­er­gy has neg­a­tive­ly af­fect­ed the eco­nom­ic per­for­mance of many Caribbean na­tions and con­tributed to in­sta­bil­i­ty in both fis­cal and ex­ter­nal ac­counts, in­clud­ing T&T, which was im­port­ing most of its crude oil and then cre­at­ing re­fined prod­ucts with do­mes­tic needs and for the re­gion­al mar­ket.

“This im­port and re­fined mod­el was be­ing car­ried on with sig­nif­i­cant loan sup­port from the na­tion­al trea­sury. By 2018, in the ab­sence of an im­proved crude oil sup­ply, the ac­cu­mu­lat­ed debt and pro­jec­tions for sus­tained loss­es re­sult­ed in a re­struc­tur­ing of the state-owned com­pa­ny and this in­clud­ed the clo­sure of the re­fin­ery, which, in the ab­sence of a new source of crude, stands moth­balled at Pointe-a-Pierre in Trinidad,” he said.

“This re­fin­ery and its sup­port­ing in­fra­struc­ture are avail­able for restart, up­grade and use on rea­son­able terms to any in­ter­est­ed re­fin­er or crude sup­pli­er,” he added.

Lat­er in his ad­dress, as Row­ley spoke on the pro­posed Drag­on Gas Field deal, he again re­mind­ed the at­ten­dees of the avail­abil­i­ty of the re­fin­ery for sale.

“We are still ex­plor­ing the mar­ket for a user for the re­fin­ery as men­tioned,” he said.

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young told Guardian Me­dia on Tues­day that pro­pos­als for the re­fin­ery keep com­ing in.

“The Prime Min­is­ter has again drawn ref­er­ence to the fact that in T&T, there is an oil re­fin­ery that re­mains avail­able. We are con­stant­ly, through TPHL (Trinidad Pe­tro­le­um Hold­ings Ltd), look­ing at pro­pos­als be­cause we con­tin­ue to re­ceive pro­pos­als, but if Guyana is in­ter­est­ed that is some­thing we have told them we would wel­come.”

Speak­ing ear­li­er in the day yes­ter­day, Bharatt al­so ad­dressed Guyana’s lo­cal con­tent law, which caused some con­tention be­tween busi­ness­men from Guyana and T&T last year.

“Lo­cal con­tent leg­is­la­tion is in no way a hin­drance to in­vest­ment com­ing in­to Guyana. It was nev­er de­signed to be a hin­drance to de­vel­op­ment or in­vest­ment com­ing in­to our coun­try, be­cause we do need in­vestors, we need part­ners to de­vel­op our re­sources in this coun­ty. We can­not do it alone,” Bhar­rat said.

He said Guyana is open for busi­ness.

“As a gov­ern­ment, we have an open-door pol­i­cy to in­vest­ment we have an open-door pol­i­cy to any in­vestor com­ing in­to our coun­try,” he said.