It's crit­i­cal for re­fi­nanc­ing of Petrotrin's (US)$850 mil­lion bond pay­ment to be done with­out de­lay and re­quests for pro­pos­als will be is­sued next month, says Petrotrin chair­man Wil­fred Es­pinet.

“With the process in train now, we an­tic­i­pate we should have an idea of where the mat­ter stands in about two months," Es­pinet added.

Es­pinet spoke to the Guardian yes­ter­day af­ter En­er­gy Min­is­ter Franklin Khan re­ject­ed the Oil­field Work­ers' Trade Union's plan to save the em­bat­tled com­pa­ny. Khan said Gov­ern­ment has start­ed pre­lim­i­nary dis­cus­sions to re­fi­nance Petrotrin's (US) $850 mil­lion bond.

The in­ter­na­tion­al bond, which in­volves for­eign in­vestors, is one of the pri­or­i­ty is­sues fac­ing the com­pa­ny whose re­fin­ery Gov­ern­ment in­tends to close in two weeks. Cit­ing loss­es, an Au­gust 28 Petrotrin state­ment stat­ed the plan is to end its Pointe-a-Pierre oil re­fin­ing op­er­a­tions and en­tire­ly re­design its Ex­plo­ration and Pro­duc­tion sec­tion to cur­tail loss­es and "get Petrotrin on a path to sus­tain­able prof­itabil­i­ty".

The state­ment added, “Ap­prox­i­mate­ly 2,600 per­ma­nent jobs will be af­fect­ed—the re­designed Ex­plo­ration and Pro­duc­tion busi­ness will have ap­prox­i­mate­ly 800 work­ers and all 1,700 jobs in re­fin­ing will be ter­mi­nat­ed.”

The com­pa­ny has cit­ed the bul­let re­pay­ment on the (US)$850m bond—due in 11 months—among Petrotrin's ma­jor fi­nan­cial chal­lenges. That bond was ob­tained in 2009 for the Gas Op­ti­mi­sa­tion plan. Petrotrin al­so has a (US)$750m bond re­pay­ment due May 2022. That was ob­tained in 2007 for the Ul­tra Low Sul­phur diesel plant.

Af­ter Khan spoke on the re­fi­nanc­ing move last Fri­day, Es­pinet said they are al­ready in process “test­ing the tem­per­a­ture”—do­ing var­i­ous mod­els and ex­am­in­ing what op­tions are avail­able and what needs to be done.

"Then we'll is­sue a re­quest for pro­pos­als for re­fi­nanc­ing by Oc­to­ber. It will take a lit­tle time but we an­tic­i­pate that with­in the next two months we should have an idea of where we are on the sit­u­a­tion.”

The team is work­ing to en­sure no de­lays on the mat­ter. Es­pinet said the mat­ter was ur­gent. He said if T&T can­not demon­strate the abil­i­ty to have a so­lu­tion on the re­fi­nanc­ing, it could af­fect this coun­try's na­tion­al debt and have neg­a­tive eco­nom­ic con­se­quences. "For­eign in­vestors must have con­fi­dence in our sys­tems," he added.

Es­pinet ex­plained re­fi­nanc­ing wouldn't halt the re­fin­ery clo­sure since the clo­sure was a nec­es­sary part of the re­fi­nanc­ing process and it was out of that mod­el, the Board would present its po­si­tion to fi­nanciers.

The clo­sure was al­so the ba­sis on which the re­struc­tur­ing of the com­pa­ny had to be done, he not­ed.

No talks yet on sep­a­ra­tion pack­ages

Af­ter Gov­ern­ment's fi­nal de­c­la­ra­tion last week that the re­fin­ery will be closed, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley man­dat­ed that com­pa­ny and union start work­ing out work­ers' sep­a­ra­tion pack­ages.

With the clock tick­ing to the Oc­to­ber 1 re­fin­ery clo­sure date, Es­pinet said fi­nan­cial and psy­cho­log­i­cal coun­selling was be­ing pro­vid­ed to work­ers, but talks with OW­TU on the pack­ages haven't start­ed yet. “This (pack­ages) must go through a process—we need to talk to the union first.”

His Board meets Wednes­day with OW­TU—but that's on OW­TU's plan to save the com­pa­ny.

Es­pinet said his team has been work­ing out OW­TU's plan to as­sess the vi­a­bil­i­ty of its num­bers and mod­el since that wasn't ev­i­dent.

Not­ing part of the pro­pos­al calls for the in­creased num­ber of work­ers, he said his team had done an ex­er­cise which showed that even with re­duc­ing re­fin­ery num­bers to a min­i­mum—by ap­prox­i­mate­ly 47 per cent—it still couldn't make mon­ey. Es­pinet said he un­der­stood clear­ly when he took the chair­man­ship last year, that his job would be tough.

'House of mourn­ing in­side Petrotrin'

Yes­ter­day, OW­TU's Ed­u­ca­tion Re­search of­fi­cer Ozzie War­wick said dis­cus­sions with the com­pa­ny on work­ers' sep­a­ra­tion pack­ages "...Is not on our (OW­TU) agen­da. We're fo­cus­ing on try­ing our ut­most best to get our plan to save the com­pa­ny in mo­tion and save the en­tire en­ti­ty so it would not come to a point of need­ing to cut jobs and give work­ers sep­a­ra­tion pack­ages."

Petrotrin (Trin­mar) work­er Chankar Teelucks­ingh said, "The feel­ing in­side Petrotrin right now is like a house of mourn­ing when some­one dies—peo­ple are in a state of un­cer­tain­ty, don't know what's go­ing on. We're un­sure of what the sep­a­ra­tion as­pect may in­volve, what peo­ple may get or how.

"There are con­cerns about work­ers' med­ical and pen­sion plans, study grants, and what'll be­come of their hous­ing ben­e­fits (for peo­ple with mort­gages) and let­ters of com­mit­ment if we go to fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions."

Out­side of Petrotrin, some sup­pli­ers to the com­pa­ny yes­ter­day ex­pressed con­cern about get­ting paid for their goods be­fore the Oc­to­ber 1 re­fin­ery clo­sure. A few have con­sid­ered hold­ing back goods un­til they get a let­ter of as­sur­ance from Petrotrin that pay­ments will be made and any or­der that can­not be de­liv­ered by month end will be can­celled.