Gail Alexan­der

A re­port by Gov­ern­ment’s Eval­u­a­tion team on Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gies and Tech­nolo­gies’ (PET) pro­pos­al to buy the Guaracara re­fin­ery is be­ing re­viewed and will be sent to Cab­i­net, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said yes­ter­day.

The re­port is still out­stand­ing be­yond its sched­uled No­vem­ber 30 de­liv­ery date for Cab­i­net.

The team was man­dat­ed at the start of No­vem­ber to meet with PET on its pro­pos­al af­ter a Cab­i­net sub-com­mit­tee stat­ed PET hadn’t met con­di­tions to pur­chase. The eval­u­a­tion team was man­dat­ed to present its re­port to Cab­i­net by No­vem­ber 30.

Re­spond­ing to UNC MP Rudy In­dars­ingh’s query in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, Row­ley said PET on Oc­to­ber 29 pre­sent­ed a re­vised pro­pos­al for the re­fin­ery plus ad­di­tion­al in­for­ma­tion clar­i­fy­ing fi­nanc­ing and na­tion­al fu­el se­cu­ri­ty as­pects.

“These are be­ing care­ful­ly re­viewed to de­ter­mine if they meet the nec­es­sary cri­te­ria and con­di­tions to al­low the trans­ac­tion to move to the next stage,” he added.

He said no ex­ten­sion was grant­ed to the com­mit­tee be­yond the No­vem­ber 30 de­liv­ery date. Row­ley said any talk of “ex­ten­sion was mis­chief by those who want to scut­tle this at all costs.”

But he con­firmed the re­port is not yet be­fore Cab­i­net - and he didn’t say (or was asked) why.

How­ev­er, Row­ley said the re­port has been re­ceived “in the prop­er quar­ter” and is be­ing re­viewed and “will be ad­vanced to the Cab­i­net in the prop­er way and the pop­u­la­tion will be kept in­formed.”

On fur­ther Op­po­si­tion query, Row­ley said the re­port on the re­view of Wa­ter And Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) op­er­a­tions done by a Cab­i­net sub-com­mit­tee, will be pre­sent­ed to him to­mor­row.

The re­view, geared to pro­duce a plan to im­prove T&T’s wa­ter sup­ply, fo­cused on WASA’s op­er­a­tions, mount­ing debt, age­ing pipelines, gov­er­nance struc­ture and poor wa­ter dis­tri­b­u­tion. It was al­so to ex­am­ine if a wa­ter rate hike is need­ed.

Con­tour­Glob­al buy­ing pri­vate pow­er gen­er­a­tion com­pa­ny

Dr Row­ley al­so said a British pow­er gen­er­a­tor com­pa­ny Con­tour­Glob­al which is buy­ing con­tract­ed op­er­at­ing pow­er plants in T&T and the US, is buy­ing Trin­i­ty Pow­er Lim­it­ed (TPL) in T&T - not a state-owned com­pa­ny.

This, af­ter Reuters on Tues­day, re­port­ed that Con­tour­Glob­al, a Lon­don list­ed com­pa­ny is buy­ing pow­er plants ex­pand­ing in­to T&T and US mar­kets.

The com­pa­ny, found­ed in 2005, owns man­ages and gen­er­ates elec­tric­i­ty through wind, so­lar and hy­dro-pow­er and has cus­tomers world­wide.

Reuters re­port­ed that Con­tour­Glob­al stat­ed it will buy the con­tract­ed op­er­at­ing pow­er plants in the US and T&T for $837 mil­lion. The com­pa­ny’s plan in­volves buy­ing a port­fo­lio of nat­ur­al gas-fired and com­bined heat and pow­er as­sets to­talling 1,502 MW from West­ern Gen­er­a­tion part­ners on a “debt and cash-free ba­sis.”

When Guardian Me­dia checked with the Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­istry on Tues­day, the Min­istry stat­ed that no state-owned pow­er plant was in­volved in the pur­chase - but like­ly a pri­vate plant was.

Yes­ter­day Row­ley said T&TEC’s gen­er­al man­ag­er con­tact­ed the gen­er­al man­ag­er of Trin­i­ty Pow­er Lim­it­ed and that per­son con­firmed the process has start­ed for the ac­qui­si­tion of TPL by Con­tour­Glob­al.

TPL is one of the in­de­pen­dent pow­er pro­duc­ers in T&T with 225MW at the Point Lisas Es­tate

He said the present TPL own­er is West­ern Gen­er­a­tion Part­ners - a US com­pa­ny.

The TPL gen­er­al man­ag­er said T&TEC will be du­ly no­ti­fied when the trans­ac­tion is com­plet­ed.

Row­ley said on­ly the UK is us­ing COVID vac­cines so far. He said once T&T gets World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion ap­proval and clear­ance for its vac­cines to be is­sued, on­ly then would Gov­ern­ment say when the vac­cines would be dis­trib­uted in T&T.