RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

As Trinidad Pe­tro­le­um Hold­ings Lim­it­ed (TPHL) con­firmed it was con­tin­u­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions with Niger­ian en­er­gy com­pa­ny Oan­do to restart the Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery, Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU) pres­i­dent gen­er­al An­cel Ro­get made it clear that any deal signed close to the gen­er­al elec­tion “will not be ho­n­oured” by a fu­ture UNC gov­ern­ment.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia dur­ing a walk­a­bout in Point Fortin on Tues­day, Ro­get said the re­fin­ery clo­sure caused im­mense suf­fer­ing to fam­i­lies. He said the re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion of the oil and gas in­dus­try and em­ploy­ment would come on­ly with a UNC-led ad­min­is­tra­tion.

“Since Stu­art Young shut down Petrotrin, thou­sands of fam­i­lies have suf­fered. That will change on April 28,” he said to loud ap­plause.

Com­ment­ing on the TPHL state­ment is­sued on Mon­day about on­go­ing dis­cus­sions with Oan­do to­wards the restart of the re­fin­ery, Ro­get said this was an “elec­tion gim­mick”.

“I think they are try­ing, for yet an­oth­er time, to make an elec­tion gim­mick out of that ex­er­cise. Every elec­tion, they find a way to talk about restart­ing the re­fin­ery,” he said.

He crit­i­cised the gov­ern­ment for at­tract­ing what he de­scribed as “cor­rupt com­pa­nies” to take over the re­fin­ery.

Ro­get added, “Re­mem­ber it was Stu­art Young who shut this place down. He ad­vised Kei­th Row­ley to shut down Petrotrin, and the peo­ple con­tin­ue to suf­fer.”

Ro­get said the union al­ready knows the lu­cra­tive wells in Point Fortin and will bring back pro­duc­tion lev­els at Trin­mar to 28,000 bar­rels of oil per day.

With re­gard to the re­fin­ery, Ro­get added, “The UNC gov­ern­ment will pri­ori­tise in­spec­tion of the ne­glect­ed fa­cil­i­ties, iden­ti­fy the plants that can restart with­in ten months, and be­gin the re­ac­ti­va­tion process. The OW­TU is ready, will­ing, and able—we know where the lu­cra­tive wells are. The peo­ple of Point Fortin must ben­e­fit from sus­tain­able jobs again.”

Ro­get not­ed that re­ac­ti­vat­ing the in­dus­try would bring im­me­di­ate em­ploy­ment for Point Fortin res­i­dents.

Mean­while, UNC can­di­date for Point Fortin, Ernesto Ke­sar, who was a founder of the Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice (MSJ), said he joined the UNC af­ter the MSJ chose not to con­test the gen­er­al elec­tion. He said the labour move­ment called on him and he an­swered that call.

“This is not about me fight­ing the in­cum­bent (Kennedy Richards Jr). This is about fight­ing a sys­tem. The Er­ic Williams PNM no longer ex­ists. What we have is a group run­ning the par­ty for them­selves and the rich. Why must the rest of us suf­fer?” he asked.

He said Point Fortin con­stituents were strug­gling and restart­ing the re­fin­ery and restor­ing op­er­a­tions at Trin­mar could im­me­di­ate­ly cre­ate 1,500 to 2,000 jobs.

“These jobs will come from Point Fortin. The re­fin­ery was the largest rev­enue earn­er in this coun­try. Once you get it go­ing again, jobs will fol­low.”

He sent a di­rect mes­sage to vot­ers say­ing, “The on­ly time you’ll see the truth is on elec­tion day. When we take of­fice, we will bring the jobs you need, so come April 28, vote Kezar for Point Fortin.”

On Feb­ru­ary 27, the gov­ern­ment an­nounced that Oan­do Trad­ing, a sub­sidiary of Nige­ria’s Oan­do PLC, had been se­lect­ed as the pre­ferred bid­der to lease the Guaracara Re­fin­ing Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed’s re­fin­ery as­sets from Trinidad Pe­tro­le­um Hold­ings Ltd (TPHL). This de­ci­sion was part of ef­forts to restart the Pointe-à-Pierre re­fin­ery, which had been closed since 2018 fol­low­ing the clo­sure of Petrotrin.