Asha Javeed

Con­sul­tant Ed­i­tor In­ves­ti­ga­tions

Pres­i­dent gen­er­al of the Oil­field Work­ers Trade Union (OW­TU) An­cel Ro­get says the union is seek­ing to am­i­ca­bly re­solve mil­lions in debt, ac­cu­mu­lat­ed dur­ing its mul­ti­ple failed at­tempts to ac­quire the Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery through its com­pa­ny, Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gies and Tech­nolo­gies.

The OW­TU, the coun­try’s largest union, ac­cu­mu­lat­ed close to $40 mil­lion in debt and has two judg­ments against it—one by pro­fes­sion­al ser­vice firm, De­loitte and an­oth­er by KCL Cap­i­tal Mar­ket Bro­kers Ltd.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands the union is still hope­ful for fur­ther col­lab­o­ra­tion on the re­fin­ery un­der the Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar ad­min­is­tra­tion, but time has passed since the judg­ments.

Guardian Me­dia was in­formed that five of the OW­TU’s prop­er­ties and fi­nan­cial as­sets, which it used as col­lat­er­al to en­gage the KCL Cap­i­tal, have been ear­marked to be dis­posed of to pay off the debt.

Among the prop­er­ties used as col­lat­er­al is the OW­TU’s head­quar­ters in San Fer­nan­do.

How­ev­er, while Ro­get ac­knowl­edged that OW­TU used sev­er­al prop­er­ties, among them—the Palms lo­cat­ed at Pointe-à-Pierre Road, two prop­er­ties in San Fer­nan­do – 99A Cir­cu­lar Road (its head­quar­ters) and 97D Cir­cu­lar Road and a com­mer­cial build­ing in Port-of-Spain, as well as its share­hold­ing in One Caribbean Me­dia, Trinidad Ce­ment Ltd, Massy Hold­ings, and Na­tion­al In­vest­ment Fund Hold­ing Com­pa­ny as col­lat­er­al, he de­nied that they are for sale.

“I wish to state that the OW­TU prop­er­ties are not for sale, and cer­tain­ly no banks are fore­clos­ing on our prop­er­ties. On the con­trary, we are work­ing very close­ly and col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly with our cred­i­tors to set­tle the court judg­ment.

“You would re­call that the last PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion in their at­tempt to de­stroy the OW­TU, en­sured that we did not com­plete the process for the restart of the re­fin­ery, even though our com­pa­ny, Pa­tri­ot­ic, won the bid out of some 76 oth­er in­ter­na­tion­al con­tenders. The en­tire coun­try suf­fered as a re­sult of the PNM’s vin­dic­tive ac­tion.

“How­ev­er, this UNC and the coali­tion of in­ter­est gov­ern­ment is to­tal­ly dif­fer­ent . And so we are cur­rent­ly work­ing very close­ly with the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion for a safe, se­cure, suc­cess­ful and sus­tain­able restart of the Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery, which will be a ma­jor ben­e­fit to the en­tire coun­try,” he said yes­ter­day.

Ernesto Ke­sar, for­mer vice pres­i­dent of the OW­TU, who signed one of the loan agree­ments as a trustee, is now the MP for Point Fortin and serves as Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries.

Last week, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal said the Gov­ern­ment is en­gag­ing in­ter­na­tion­al­ly rep­utable firms to sup­port a po­ten­tial restart of the re­fin­ery.

De­loitte

With re­gard to De­loitte, Ro­get said they have en­tered a con­sent or­der and are work­ing with the firm.

In 2022, the pro­fes­sion­al ser­vices firm took le­gal ac­tion against the union for mil­lions in out­stand­ing fees.

The fees re­lat­ed to ser­vices the firm ren­dered to the OW­TU when Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gies was bid­ding for Petrotrin’s moth­balled oil re­fin­ery.

That ven­ture spanned about three years, 2019 to 2021, and three un­suc­cess­ful bids by the OW­TU to se­cure the rights to own and op­er­ate the re­fin­ery.

Af­ter sev­er­al missed dead­lines to set­tle the sums owed, De­loitte opt­ed for le­gal ac­tion against the OW­TU and Pa­tri­ot­ic.

The OW­TU ini­ti­at­ed bank­rupt­cy pro­ceed­ings for Pa­tri­ot­ic and filed to have the le­gal doc­u­ments sealed.

Ro­get did not say how much is owed to De­loitte.

KCL Cap­i­tal owed US$4.3M

In No­vem­ber 2022, KCL Cap­i­tal Mar­ket Bro­kers Ltd filed a claim against the OW­TU, de­mand­ing over US$4.3 mil­lion in out­stand­ing prin­ci­pal and in­ter­est.

Ac­cord­ing to court doc­u­ments, the loans were used to pay con­sul­tants help­ing Pa­tri­ot­ic pre­pare its of­fer to pur­chase 100 per cent of Guaracara Re­fin­ing Com­pa­ny and Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny.

The mon­ey, it was re­port­ed, was sup­posed to be re­paid in sched­uled in­stal­ments, but the OW­TU nev­er made any pay­ments, de­spite new agree­ments in 2021 and 2022 ex­tend­ing their re­pay­ment pe­ri­od.

In Ju­ly 2025, Jus­tice Car­ol Gob­in found that both OW­TU and Pa­tri­ot­ic failed to re­pay two loans to KCL Cap­i­tal, one is­sued in No­vem­ber 2019 and an­oth­er in May 2020, de­spite ac­knowl­edg­ing the debts and agree­ing to re­pay­ment terms.

Ac­cord­ing to ev­i­dence pro­vid­ed to the court, the loans were sup­port­ed by mort­gages and guar­an­tees, in­clud­ing shares held by the OW­TU in com­pa­nies like One Caribbean Me­dia and Massy Hold­ings.

The loan cen­tred around two agree­ments en­tered in­to be­tween KCL Cap­i­tal and the OW­TU, through its then-trustees Ozzi War­wick, Ray­mond Hug­gins, and Ernesto Ke­sar, be­tween No­vem­ber 2019 and May 2020.

The re­fin­ery was moth­balled in Oc­to­ber 2018 fol­low­ing the clo­sure of Petrotrin.

Since then, the OW­TU com­pa­ny, Pa­tri­ot­ic, was the front-line bid­der for the re­fin­ery.

How­ev­er, its fi­nan­cial pro­pos­als for tak­ing over the re­fin­ery were re­ject­ed three times by the gov­ern­ment-ap­point­ed com­mit­tee and sub­se­quent­ly by the for­mer Cab­i­net.