Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gies and Tech­nolo­gies Com­pa­ny Ltd com­plet­ed a pre­lim­i­nary walk­through of the for­mer Petrotrin Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery be­tween March 2 and March 6, 2020.

Paria Trad­ing chair­man New­man George opn Wednes­day con­firmed that a joint in­spec­tion of the as­sets that make up the re­fin­ery took place over those four days but the deal is now in sus­pen­sion un­til Pa­tri­ot­ic presents its sched­ule to com­plete a more de­tailed in­spec­tion.

“They were giv­en two weeks to present a sched­ule to com­plete a more in-depth in­spec­tion and we are still wait­ing for that sched­ule,” George said in a tele­phone in­ter­view, adding he has had no com­mu­ni­ca­tion since with Pa­tri­ot­ic or its own­ers, the Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU).

How­ev­er, George said he doubt­ed that the COVID-19 re­stric­tions had any­thing to do with the lack of fol­low-up from Pa­tri­ot­ic.

“If the re­stric­tions were lift­ed to­mor­row, the sched­ule could be im­ple­ment­ed soon af­ter but we have had no com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the com­pa­ny,” he said.

Asked George about the time­line to get the re­fin­ery back up and run­ning, George said, “With­out that sched­ule, I can­not an­swer your ques­tion.”

Con­tact­ed on the mat­ter, OW­TU pres­i­dent gen­er­al An­cel Ro­get said he had no com­ment at this time.

The last time the deal was dis­cussed in the pub­lic do­main was in Feb­ru­ary when Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and Ro­get pub­licly dis­agreed over why the talks were stalled. At that time, both Row­ley and En­er­gy Min­is­ter Franklin Khan said that Pa­tri­ot­ic had re­quest­ed more in­for­ma­tion and that de­layed the deal mov­ing for­ward. But Ro­get con­tend­ed then that Pa­tri­ot­ic was ready to pro­ceed weeks be­fore and any de­lay was not their fault. Ro­get fur­ther rub­bished state­ments Row­ley made to the con­trary, adding that their in­spec­tors were ready to walk through the Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery to as­cer­tain its con­di­tion.

Back in Jan­u­ary, rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gies met with a Cab­i­net ap­point­ed sub-com­mit­tee to plan the way for­ward. The sub-com­mit­tee in­clud­ed Stu­art Young, in the ca­pac­i­ty of Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Robert Le Hunte and Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries Franklin Khan.

Nei­ther Young nor Khan re­spond­ed to calls yes­ter­day and Le Hunte would on­ly say “can­not help” when he was texted ques­tions for an up­date on the sta­tus of the dis­cus­sions.

Guardian Me­dia asked Le Hunte, “As part of the sub-com­mit­tee, can you help with an up­date on the sta­tus of the deal? Did the walk­through that Pa­tri­ot­ic want­ed hap­pen?”

Le Hunte re­spond­ed with “can­not help” and did not re­spond to a sub­se­quent ques­tion of when the two groups last met.

Ques­tions about the sta­tus of the takeover come at a time when the glob­al oil prices have crashed and the lo­cal mar­ket­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion arm of the de­funct Petrotrin, Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um, has an­nounced it will cease sales in or­der to sur­vive the in­ter­na­tion­al dip in en­er­gy prices.