Gail Alexan­der

An in­ter-min­is­te­r­i­al team was ap­point­ed by Cab­i­net on Wednes­day to deal with non-core as­sets of Petrotrin—rang­ing from hous­es to land.

The six-mem­ber team has been man­dat­ed to deal with the main­te­nance, man­age­ment and dis­pos­al of Petrotrin’s non-core as­sets.

Gov­ern­ment had re­tained the com­pa­ny’s non-core as­sets af­ter it was agreed the re­fin­ery would be sold to Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gies and Tech­nolo­gies Ltd.

The team com­pris­es Min­is­ters Franklin Khan (En­er­gy), Pen­ne­lope Beck­les (Hous­ing), Stephen Mc Clashie (Labour), Kaz­im Ho­sein (Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment/Rur­al De­vel­op­ment), Ran­dall Mitchell (Tourism/Cul­ture) and Allyson West (Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion/Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion.)

The com­po­si­tion of the team—and cer­tain min­istries in­volved—has sparked spec­u­la­tion that Petrotrin prop­er­ties may be turned over to the Hous­ing and Tourism and Cul­ture min­istries.

Petrotrin has a range of non-core as­sets from lands and hous­es in parts of South Trinidad to the Point-a-Pierre Sports Club, school and oth­er fa­cil­i­ties. Sev­er­al fam­i­lies were evict­ed this week from Petrotrin Point Fortin hous­es where they’d been liv­ing il­le­gal­ly. (See page 8)

Sev­er­al build­ings—in­clud­ing hous­es—on the Point-a-Pierre re­fin­ery site have al­so been van­dalised.

When Petrotrin first closed for re­struc­tur­ing, there were in­di­ca­tions that Gov­ern­ment might con­sid­er leas­ing out the sports club to mem­bers and oth­er prop­er­ty as­sets as well.

Petrotrin’s Au­gus­tus Long Hos­pi­tal was ini­tial­ly ear­marked to be of­fered for lease/sale but this was shelved when the COVID-19 virus hit and is was used to treat pa­tients.

In April 2019, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert had in­di­cat­ed a de­ci­sion by June 2019 on al­low­ing Petrotrin non-oil pro­duc­tion as­sets for pub­lic use.

Then, he said Petrotrin’s board was look­ing at com­mer­cial­ly vi­able op­tions for the use of the club and its fa­cil­i­ties and Gov­ern­ment was ex­am­in­ing its op­tions con­cern­ing util­i­sa­tion in the pub­lic in­ter­est of Petrotrin as­sets that aren’t es­sen­tial for oil pro­duc­tion.

He added that Gov­ern­ment recog­nised Petrotrin pro­vid­ed quite a large num­ber of ser­vices to sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ties and al­so to peo­ple in sur­round­ing ar­eas, and was look­ing at vest­ing all non-oil pro­duc­ing as­sets in­to a state en­ter­prise which would con­trol these as­sets.

De­ci­sion on the non-core as­sets team came on the eve of to­day’s dead­line for con­clu­sion of the ne­go­ti­a­tions be­tween Gov­ern­ment and Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gies and Tech­nolo­gies Ltd for Petrotrin Guaracara re­fin­ery.

Pa­tri­ot­ic stat­ed yes­ter­day that it had sent it its fi­nal pro­pos­al to Gov­ern­ment for the way on Thurs­day, ahead of to­day’s dead­line set by the Prime Min­is­ter for con­clu­sion of ne­go­ti­a­tions. Gov­ern­ment had said if the sale wasn’t con­clud­ed by to­day, oth­er op­tions would have to be sought for the re­fin­ery.