An­tho­ny Wil­son

Con­sul­tant Busi­ness Ed­i­tor

an­tho­ny.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Niger­ian in­te­grat­ed en­er­gy com­pa­ny, Oan­do Plc, was yes­ter­day named as the pre­ferred bid­der to lease the Guaracara re­fin­ery in Pointe-a-Pierre, based on a rec­om­men­da­tion by an eval­u­a­tion com­mit­tee.

Mak­ing the an­nounce­ment at yes­ter­day’s post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing at White­hall, Port-of-Spain, act­ing Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young out­lined the work of the eval­u­a­tion com­mit­tee, which re­ceived ad­vice from Sco­tia In­ter­na­tion­al, which op­er­ates out of Hous­ton, Texas.

The com­mit­tee is chaired by T&T’s High Com­mis­sion­er to the UK, for­mer per­ma­nent sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Fi­nance Vish­nu Dhan­paul.

Young said the eval­u­a­tion com­mit­tee re­port­ed to a sub-com­mit­tee of Cab­i­net, head­ed by Min­is­ter of Hous­ing and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Camille Robin­son-Reg­is, and al­so com­mis­sioned a due dili­gence re­port from the com­mer­cial an­a­lyt­ics com­pa­ny Dun & Brad­street.

Oan­do was se­lect­ed as the pre­ferred bid­der ahead of the oth­er short­list­ed com­pa­ny, CRO Con­sor­tium, a group­ing of three com­pa­nies, one lo­cal and two for­eign. A third com­pa­ny, In­ca Re­fin­ing, was ex­clud­ed be­cause it did not sub­mit a de­tailed fi­nal pro­pos­al to the eval­u­a­tion com­mit­tee by the cut-off date.

Young said Oan­do and CRO Con­sor­tium re­ceived sim­i­lar scores for their ex­pe­ri­ence and ca­pa­bil­i­ty in main­tain­ing and op­er­at­ing a re­fin­ery. He said the eval­u­a­tion com­mit­tee al­so as­sessed the two com­pa­nies based on their abil­i­ty to raise fi­nanc­ing, for an as­set in­tegri­ty re­port and the work­ing cap­i­tal need­ed to restart the plant.

“Oan­do’s track record of rais­ing funds in the up­stream sec­tor helped it rate on a high­er score there. The com­pa­ny is not en­vis­aged to have any ex­ter­nal fi­nanc­ing needs for work­ing cap­i­tal,” said Young.

In out­lin­ing Oan­do’s re­cent fi­nanc­ing ac­tions, Young said the com­pa­ny ac­quired the Niger­ian as­sets of US en­er­gy firm Cono­coPhillips for US$1.5 bil­lion. That ac­qui­si­tion took place in 2014. In Au­gust last year, Oan­do com­plet­ed the ac­qui­si­tion of the Niger­ian Agip Oil com­pa­ny from Ital­ian en­er­gy gi­ant for a to­tal con­sid­er­a­tion of US$783 mil­lion.

Young said un­der the lease arrange­ment, it is en­vis­aged that the Guaracara Re­fin­ing Com­pa­ny Ltd, which owns the for­mer Petrotrin re­fin­ery, which has been moth­balled since No­vem­ber, 2018, would op­er­ate along­side Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny. This would pro­vide the Niger­ian com­pa­ny with ac­cess to its as­so­ci­at­ed lo­gis­tic as­sets by way of a com­mer­cial arrange­ment be­tween Paria and Oan­do.

He said the lease arrange­ment would al­low the Gov­ern­ment to re­tain own­er­ship of the re­fin­ery while grant­i­ng us­age rights to the pre­ferred bid­der to gen­er­ate con­sis­tent rev­enue.

“So, we’re not giv­ing up Paria. It be­came ob­vi­ous to the eval­u­a­tion com­mit­tee that some of the bid­ders want­ed to get hold of Paria for bunker­ing pur­pos­es, and were re­al­ly not in­ter­est­ed in restart­ing the re­fin­ery. We, the Gov­ern­ment, were adamant in our dis­cus­sions with the eval­u­a­tion com­mit­tee that we have to pro­tect the as­sets of Paria to al­ways en­sure that we can pro­vide do­mes­tic fu­el to our pop­u­la­tion,” Young said.

The de­tails of the fi­nan­cial terms of the lease arrange­ment are to be “worked out” by Oan­do and Trinidad Pe­tro­le­um Hold­ings Ltd, which owns Guaracara Re­fin­ing.

How­ev­er, he said he ex­pects Oan­do to come un­der at­tack over the fact that it was delist­ed on stock ex­changes in Nige­ria and South Africa.

“Those two delist­ings were as a re­sult of Oan­do not fil­ing their fi­nan­cials in ac­cor­dance with the reg­u­la­tions on time. Both were sub­se­quent­ly sat­is­fied,” Young said.