Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says her par­ty will not ho­n­our any agree­ment the cur­rent Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) Gov­ern­ment en­ters in­to re­gard­ing the Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery—and she says Gov­ern­ment’s “col­lud­ing” with Nico­las Maduro’s Venezuela regime is the “worst Bend Over” in T&T’s en­er­gy sec­tor his­to­ry.

“And we guar­an­tee that the UNC will pur­sue in­ves­ti­ga­tions against every­one who par­tic­i­pates in this theft of the PaP re­fin­ery as­sets,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so promised yes­ter­day.

The Op­po­si­tion Leader made the com­ment yes­ter­day via re­lease, af­ter word from act­ing Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young that Oan­do PLC was cho­sen as the pre­ferred bid­der for the “moth­balled” Petrotrin re­fin­ery.

Cab­i­net de­cid­ed to in­form Trinidad Pe­tro­le­um Hold­ings Lim­it­ed (TPHL) of its non-ob­jec­tion to the rec­om­men­da­tions of the Vish­nu Dhan­paul eval­u­a­tion com­mit­tee and its pro­pos­als for the sale of the re­fin­ery. It was agreed TPHL should con­sid­er the rec­om­men­da­tions and pro­ceed ac­cord­ing­ly. Oan­do is a Niger­ian-based oil and gas com­pa­ny that trades in crude oil and pe­tro­le­um prod­ucts.

How­ev­er, not­ing is­sues with the arrange­ment, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said, “The en­tire coun­try knows that this dis­pos­al of the re­fin­ery on the eve of a gen­er­al elec­tion is a last-gasp cor­rupt deal to fill the pock­ets of this out­go­ing gov­ern­ment.

“This is the third time this Gov­ern­ment has found dis­rep­utable (sic) per­sons to gift the re­fin­ery. The first were two elec­tri­cians in a store­front in the US called Quan­ten LLC, then cor­rup­tion-ac­cused Jin­dal and now cor­rup­tion-plagued Oan­do,” she al­leged.

“The UNC will not ho­n­our any agree­ment that this Gov­ern­ment en­ters in­to re­gard­ing the Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery and we guar­an­tee that the UNC will pur­sue in­ves­ti­ga­tions against every­one who par­tic­i­pates in this theft of the re­fin­ery as­sets.”

Cit­ing a T&T Guardian ar­ti­cle on the re­fin­ery’s op­er­at­ing prof­it dur­ing 2018, its last year of ex­is­tence, she al­leged, “De­spite mak­ing a prof­it in its last year of op­er­a­tion, which was about 1.67 bil­lion dol­lars, the re­fin­ery was shut down to pro­tect Row­ley’s friends and scut­tle crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

“The UNC com­mits to restart­ing the Petrotrin re­fin­ery in con­sul­ta­tion with lo­cal stake­hold­ers fol­low­ing the gen­er­al elec­tions.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so com­ment­ed on Young’s state­ments re­gard­ing the fu­ture of T&T’s Drag­on gas and oth­er fields in Venezuela, fol­low­ing US Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio’s di­rec­tive elim­i­nat­ing oil and gas li­cences for for­eign com­pa­nies in Venezuela.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar, said, “To­day, the PNM Gov­ern­ment found out ‘wah Trump cud do weee’. Row­ley and Stu­art’s 10 years col­lud­ing with the il­le­git­i­mate drug traf­fick­ing gov­ern­ment of Nico­las Maduro for ac­cess to Drag­on field gas will be record­ed as the worst ‘bend over’ in our en­er­gy sec­tor his­to­ry.

“US Sec­re­tary of State Ru­bio’s post on X was the lat­est hu­mil­i­a­tion dealt to Young and Row­ley fol­low­ing a se­ries of fail­ures. Stu­art has been out of his depth in Gov­ern­ment for the last 10 years. He is sim­ply an un­re­mark­able ju­nior lawyer foist­ed on­to the coun­try by Row­ley ...,” she claimed.

“All met­rics in the en­er­gy sec­tor are down and he had no sol­id or sen­si­ble an­swers (at the me­dia brief­ing) when asked about the fu­ture of our coun­try’s gas pro­duc­tion or oil re­fin­ing in­dus­tries.”