Petrotrin’s re­fin­ery gates won’t be closed im­me­di­ate­ly on Oc­to­ber 1 - there’ll be a phased ex­it of em­ploy­ees start­ing with the re­fin­ery.

Gov­ern­ment and the com­pa­ny’s board had set Oc­to­ber 1 as the tar­get date for re­fin­ery clo­sure and the start of a re­struc­tur­ing of the com­pa­ny.

The jobs of al­most 4,800 per­ma­nent and tem­po­rary/ca­su­al em­ploy­ees will all be af­fect­ed, par­tic­u­lar­ly 1,700 re­fin­ery posts. Work­ers will even­tu­al­ly have to reap­ply for jobs in a re­struc­tured Ex­plo­ration and Pro­duc­tion di­vi­sion which will be Petrotrin’s new fo­cus.

Notes to Petrotrin’s Au­gust 2018 fi­nan­cial state­ments showed the com­pa­ny record­ed a net prof­it af­ter tax of $83.2 mil­lion for last month. Ex­plo­ration and Pro­duc­tion, in­clud­ing Trin­mar, record­ed a net prof­it of $20.5 mil­lion - but Re­fin­ing and Mar­ket­ing record­ed a net loss of $7.5 mil­lion.

A Petrotrin Board memo, ac­knowl­edg­ing the un­cer­tain­ty and anx­i­ety re­gard­ing the re­struc­tur­ing plans and the Oc­to­ber 1 date, stat­ed: “We want to un­der­score Oc­to­ber 1 marks the start of the tran­si­tion pe­ri­od and isn’t the last day of work for every Petrotrin em­ploy­ee.

“The tim­ing and du­ra­tion of the tran­si­tion is go­ing to be de­ter­mined by our abil­i­ty to do it smooth­ly, ef­fi­cient­ly and safe­ly over the next few months.”

The memo added, “We are in the process of im­ple­ment­ing the most prac­ti­cal ap­proach to tran­si­tion the com­pa­ny with­out neg­a­tive­ly af­fect­ing the busi­ness. It would be im­prac­ti­cal to have a sin­gle hard-stop date.”

Petrotrin chair­man Wil­fred Es­pinet told T&T Guardian last Fri­day that all Petrotrin doors won’t be closed Oc­to­ber 1 in a hard and fast way. He said that wasn’t pos­si­ble since the com­pa­ny hadn’t yet had a chance to have “mean­ing­ful dis­cus­sions to present things” prop­er­ly to the Oil­field Work­ers’ Trade Union.

Es­pinet said the board meets the OW­TU on Thurs­day.

“We can’t do any­thing un­til we’ve met. There has to be a process for re­fin­ery clo­sure. The board will pur­sue this in a way to be the least dis­rup­tive to en­sure fu­el sup­plies aren’t af­fect­ed,” Es­pinet said.

“Oc­to­ber 1 was a tar­get date so there’ll be a phased ex­it of peo­ple based on what is re­quired to con­duct a safe and or­der­ly tran­si­tion. So all doors won’t close Oc­to­ber 1.”

In­di­cat­ing the re­fin­ery will be phased out first, he added, “We’ve al­ready be­gun the process of mak­ing sure it will be con­duct­ed in the least dis­rup­tive way so sup­plies won’t be dis­turbed.”

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Franklin Khan re­cent­ly said the de­com­mis­sion­ing of the re­fin­ery is ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed by De­cem­ber. He said one couldn’t flick a switch and close re­fin­ery as­pects all in one day and cer­tain ar­eas had to be turned off with preser­va­tion plans in place.

The board’s memo al­so stat­ed that de­tails on com­pen­sa­tion and ben­e­fits are “cur­rent­ly be­ing fi­nalised.”

“These will be com­mu­ni­cat­ed as soon as soon as they have been com­plet­ed. We do not want to pro­vide ap­prox­i­ma­tions or any oth­er in­for­ma­tion that is not com­plete­ly ac­cu­rate. This will on­ly lead to greater un­cer­tain­ty,” the memo said.

The memo stat­ed Petrotrin’s Em­ploy­ee As­sis­tance Ser­vices is al­so pro­vid­ing psy­cho­log­i­cal help, fi­nan­cial coun­selling and ad­vice for a pe­ri­od of six months.

“We are par­tic­u­lar­ly sen­si­tive about the in­crease in stress and anx­i­ety that loss of em­ploy­ment may cause.”