Senior Political Reporter
United National Congress (UNC) deputy leader David Lee is claiming there was division among Government members at last Thursday’s Cabinet meeting regarding who to award the Pointe-a-Pierre refinery to.
Lee made the claim at Thursday’s UNC pavement meeting in Princes Town, adding, “The PNM will pull out their number one political football, the refinery. The PNM has used this refinery to politically mamaguy the country for every election since its closure in 2018.
“Now, on the eve of the 2025 election, they’ll come again to fool you with false refinery hope. They’ll want to gaslight the population saying they’ll restore economic stability with refinery reopening. But we must never forget the deep wounds, scars and irreparable damage they caused to tens of thousands in 2018 when they shut down Petrotrin.
“The PNM has lost the moral authority to speak about reopening the refinery.”
Lee recounted that Finance Minister Colm Imbert had said ten proposals were received for the refinery. Scotia Capital, which was hired to do the procurement, together with the evaluation team headed by T&T’s High Commissioner to London Vishnu Dhanpaul, found proposals worthy of consideration from three entities.
These were CRO Consortium, a locally based consortium comprising three companies, INCA Energy LLC, a company based in the USA and Oando PLC, a company based in Nigeria.
Lee added, “We ask the Government, are the rumours true that Oando PLC is earmarked for the refinery? We call on Energy Minister Stuart Young, the incoming Prime Minister to tell the country, has the Cabinet agreed to give the refinery to Oando PLC?
“We raise this concern because in October 2024, the Trinidad Guardian ran a very troubling story on October 2nd 2024, ‘Refinery Bidder Oando PLC probed by Nigerian SEC’.”
The article stated that Oando PLC was investigated by the Nigeria Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) in 2019. The probe found Oando PLC’s management was involved in serious infractions and it suffered a significant decline in investor confidence and financial performance as a result of the board crisis due to petitions by two shareholders.
Lee alleged the company did not have a track record in the refining business.
“That’s the problem we have, so we’re asking Rowley and Stuart Young ... because I understand last week in Cabinet they had a problem, they had a division among their own colleagues in that Cabinet meeting last week Thursday. They’re having problems in deciding who they want to give the refinery to.”