KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Wade Mark has shot down Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s claim that the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) is un­pa­tri­ot­ic.

In re­sponse to Row­ley’s ac­cu­sa­tion that the op­po­si­tion par­ty chased Jin­dal Steel and Pow­er Lim­it­ed (JS­PL) from bid­ding for the Guaracara re­fin­ery, Mark said, “I think the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress is the most pa­tri­ot­ic group of men and women ever seen be­cause we are fight­ing to safe­guard the as­sets of the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go from crooks and ban­dits.”

In a Face­book post on Fri­day, Row­ley ex­pressed his dis­may af­ter see­ing a pho­to of JS­PL Chair­man Naveen Jin­dal pre­sent­ing an award on be­half of OP Jin­dal Glob­al Uni­ver­si­ty of In­dia fea­tured in a doc­u­ment by Com­mon­wealth Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al Baroness Pa­tri­cia Scot­land.

Mark ques­tioned the rel­e­vance of Row­ley’s post, which he said tied the re­fin­ery bid to Jin­dal’s award pre­sen­ta­tion for Scot­land’s 2022 grad­u­a­tion speech. He added that Row­ley’s state­ment did not align with the con­tents of the re­port.

“I do not un­der­stand what that has to do with some­one fac­ing 10 or 11 crim­i­nal charges of cor­rup­tion in an In­di­an court. The Prime Min­is­ter seems to have been in a melt­down, as it does not say Jin­dal re­ceived an award from the Com­mon­wealth Sec­re­tari­at in 2024,” he said.

Mark sug­gest­ed Row­ley’s post was an at­tempt to dis­tract from more press­ing is­sues like crime and eco­nom­ic in­sta­bil­i­ty, as well as his al­leged plan to ap­point Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy Af­fairs, Stu­art Young, as his suc­ces­sor. He claimed the lat­ter move had sparked a re­bel­lion against Row­ley with­in the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM).

He re­it­er­at­ed that Jin­dal was fac­ing cor­rup­tion charges in In­dia and that the UNC was not re­spon­si­ble for these al­le­ga­tions.

Mark al­so ac­cused the gov­ern­ment of vi­o­lat­ing the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act in the process of sell­ing the re­fin­ery and ques­tioned how Trinidad Pe­tro­le­um Hold­ings Ltd (TPHL) had se­lect­ed Sco­tia Cap­i­tal (USA) Inc. to eval­u­ate the re­fin­ery bids with­out an in­ter­na­tion­al ten­der.

He point­ed to a US Se­cu­ri­ties and Ex­change Com­mis­sion (SEC) charge against Sco­tia Cap­i­tal (USA) Inc. in May 2023 for fail­ing to main­tain prop­er elec­tron­ic com­mu­ni­ca­tions, which re­sult­ed in a US$7.5 mil­lion fine. De­spite these is­sues, TPHL paid the firm US$55,000 month­ly for their ser­vices, he said.

Mark al­so dou­bled down on his claims that of the three bid­ders se­lect­ed for the re­fin­ery, one had been delist­ed by the Niger­ian Stock Ex­change, an­oth­er had filed for bank­rupt­cy, and the third was part of a con­sor­tium not legal­ly in­cor­po­rat­ed in T&T.

The con­sor­tium in­clud­ed a com­pa­ny with its par­ent in In­dia, whose di­rec­tors were linked to the Jin­dal fam­i­ly. Mark ac­cused the gov­ern­ment of ma­nip­u­lat­ing the process to favour com­pa­nies aligned with Venezue­lan and In­di­an in­ter­ests.

Strat­e­gy and en­er­gy con­sul­tant Gre­go­ry McGuire, of VSL Con­sul­tants, said the suc­cess of any buy­er de­pends on their in­vest­ment to make the re­fin­ery cost-ef­fec­tive and mar­ket-com­pet­i­tive.

He ex­plained that the re­fin­ery would need sig­nif­i­cant re­fur­bish­ment to be vi­able as it can­not meet mod­ern mar­ket de­mands with its cur­rent set­up. The fa­cil­i­ty can pro­duce ba­sic prod­ucts like fu­el oil and gaso­line, but cus­tomers al­so re­quire high­er-qual­i­ty re­fined prod­ucts, he said.

“Any­body who pur­chas­es the re­fin­ery has to spend mon­ey to re­fur­bish it. What they buy would be re­al es­tate, some new­er plants, stor­age, and ba­sic equip­ment, but they must in­vest mon­ey to pro­duce top-line prod­ucts,” McGuire said.

He said the glob­al re­fin­ing mar­ket re­mains com­pet­i­tive de­spite clo­sures, as re­finer­ies are still es­sen­tial for petro­chem­i­cals and fu­el pro­duc­tion. How­ev­er, ef­fi­cien­cy and strate­gic lo­ca­tion are key fac­tors for suc­cess.

McGuire said T&T’s ge­o­graph­i­cal ad­van­tage, as it is lo­cat­ed be­tween the Amer­i­c­as and Eu­rope, is a sig­nif­i­cant fac­tor that helped for­mer re­fin­ery op­er­a­tor Tex­a­co thrive. This ad­van­tage still ex­ists, but it re­quires the re­fin­ery to pro­duce com­pet­i­tive­ly to meet cur­rent stan­dards.

McGuire could not de­ter­mine if the US$500 mil­lion Jin­dal pro­posed to in­vest was an ac­cu­rate es­ti­mate for re­fur­bish­ing the re­fin­ery but said it was an in­vest­ment de­ci­sion the JS­PL had to make.

He agreed with Young’s state­ment that re­finer­ies are shut­ting down glob­al­ly due to shift­ing dy­nam­ics but reaf­firmed that re­fin­ing re­mains a vi­able busi­ness for those with the most ef­fi­cient op­er­a­tions.