Gail Alexan­der

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.”