Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gies and Tech­nolo­gies is still ready to ac­quire the Guaracara re­fin­ery if Gov­ern­ment wants to re-en­gage the com­pa­ny, says OW­TU's Ozzie War­wick di­rec­tor of Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gies and Tech­nolo­gies Lim­it­ed.

And, ac­cord­ing to him, Pa­tri­ot­ic was al­ways pre­pared to be flex­i­ble.

War­wick spoke yes­ter­day af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley on Mon­day in­di­cat­ed that the most re­cent re­quest for pro­pos­als (RFP) for the re­fin­ery "is on its last legs." He added the State had got­ten to the point of deal­ing with one com­pa­ny - but those dis­cus­sions hadn't been con­clud­ed and at this time "don't ap­pear to be very promis­ing."

Row­ley said once it's de­ter­mined that the peo­ple they are deal­ing with "can't come up with what they say they can come up with," Gov­ern­ment will then dis­con­tin­ue. He said if the re­fin­ery is to be used by any per­son/en­ti­ty who comes with the terms the Gov­ern­ment can ac­cept, it will be con­sid­ered.

In May af­ter Gov­ern­ment stat­ed a pre­ferred bid­der was se­lect­ed, Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Wade Mark queried the RFP process ask­ing if the bid­der was US-based Quan­ten LLC.

Mark had ex­pressed con­cerns about that com­pa­ny.

Min­is­ter of En­er­gy Stu­art Young sub­se­quent­ly said Trinidad Pe­tro­le­um Hold­ings Ltd along with ad­vi­sors and in­ter­na­tion­al ex­perts were han­dling the process and it was nar­rowed down to one en­ti­ty. He al­so said Quan­ten was en­gaged in the RFP process and var­i­ous arms of the US Gov­ern­ment had com­mu­ni­cat­ed with him with re­spect to Quan­ten in­di­cat­ing the lat­ter's in­ter­est in the RPF and there was sup­port for the com­pa­ny, be­ing an Amer­i­can-based en­ti­ty.

How­ev­er, Row­ley's com­ment on Mon­day raised ques­tions on fur­ther new bid­ders.

Pa­tri­ot­ic had sub­mit­ted three bids for the re­fin­ery since it was closed in 2018.

Yes­ter­day OW­TU's War­wick said, "The door has nev­er been closed where we're con­cerned - we didn't close it, Gov­ern­ment did but we're still in­ter­est­ed and ready to ac­quire the re­fin­ery if they so de­sire. Par­tic­u­lar­ly more so now to se­cure the na­tion­al in­ter­est due to eco­nom­ic chal­lenges fac­ing T&T."

War­wick said while it doesn't mean bid­ding again, Pa­tri­ot­ic is ready and pre­pared at any time to sit down and re-en­gage.

"Work­ers' blood and sweat went in­to that re­fin­ery - once closed, it sig­ni­fies a loss to T&T."

He cit­ed OW­TU pres­i­dent gen­er­al An­cel Ro­get's Labour day state­ments. War­ick added, "He re­mind­ed T&T that Pa­tri­ot­ic won the bid, had the mon­ey and ex­pe­ri­enced work­ers and that Pa­tri­ot­ic 'was and is still ready to pur­chase, re­fur­bish and restart the re­fin­ery'

"Mr Ro­get al­so point­ed out Gov­ern­ment in a 'con­niv­ing, un­der­hand­ed way' closed the process in the mid­dle of the ne­go­ti­a­tions," War­ick added.

War­wick said the huge lien on the re­fin­ery was the is­sue with Pa­tri­ot­ic's bid and will al­ways be the is­sue. But he said Pa­tri­ot­ic was al­ways pre­pared to be flex­i­ble. He added Pa­tri­ot­ic main­tains com­mu­ni­ca­tion with its part­ners and the part­ners are al­so flex­i­ble.

"Time is of the essence. Since the first bid we point­ed out that every day the as­sets were be­ing de­val­ued and that in­creas­es health and safe­ty risks be­cause of the hy­dro­car­bons in­volved in that sec­tor - the longer it's down, there's an au­to­mat­ic in­creased risk for health and safe­ty, he said.

"Rather than con­tin­ue try­ing to mis­lead the pop­u­la­tion the PM needs to be hon­est about the fact that Petrotrin's clo­sure is hurt­ing the peo­ple and let's find a way to get our re­fin­ery run­ning again in the peo­ple's in­ter­est."