SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Se­nior In­ves­tiga­tive Re­porter

shal­iza.has­sanali@guardian.co.tt

As a restart for the Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery looms ahead, for­mer Petrotrin chair­man Wil­fred Es­pinet, who led the clo­sure and re­struc­tur­ing of the com­pa­ny, re­mains scep­ti­cal.

He told Guardian Me­dia in June that it was un­like­ly that any for­eign or re­gion­al com­pa­ny would want to man­age the re­fin­ery on the ba­sis that they would have to re­in­state all the terms and con­di­tions of the con­tracts be­fore the re­struc­tur­ing was done.

Es­pinet was re­fer­ring to the im­pli­ca­tions of the Mis­cel­la­neous Pro­vi­sions (Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um, Paria Fu­el Trad­ing and Guaracara Re­fin­ing Vest­ing) (Amend­ment) Bill, 2026, which was passed in Par­lia­ment on June 17.

The bill al­lows Her­itage and Paria-Petrotrin’s suc­ces­sor com­pa­nies to hold suc­ces­sor­ship to col­lec­tive agree­ments which ex­ist­ed in Petrotrin and al­lows the OW­TU to con­tin­ue be­ing recog­nised as the ma­jor­i­ty union.

“It is go­ing to be very un­like­ly that any­body is go­ing to come and take over the re­fin­ery on the ba­sis. If those con­di­tions were not there, then I would wel­come some­body com­ing in and tak­ing it over and get­ting it start­ed. I don’t see any­body tak­ing that re­fin­ery and do­ing it. So if the Gov­ern­ment does it them­selves and they do it on the ba­sis of re­in­stat­ing those terms and con­di­tions, that is in fact a pre­de­ter­mined po­si­tion of fail­ure.”

Es­pinet said the terms and con­di­tions would not be vi­able.

“If you take it and add it up… It’s not go­ing to make sense. It’s sums,” he ex­plained.

Lead­ing up to the 2018 clo­sure, Es­pinet said that with $8 bil­lion in loss­es in the past five years, and a bul­let pay­ment of US$850 mil­lion due in 2019, ter­mi­nat­ing its re­fin­ing and mar­ket­ing op­er­a­tions and re­trench­ing the em­ploy­ees was the on­ly way to save the com­pa­ny.

At a me­dia con­fer­ence fol­low­ing the an­nounce­ment back then, Es­pinet had said a com­mer­cial com­pa­ny could not con­tin­ue to op­er­ate at a loss in­def­i­nite­ly.

In jus­ti­fy­ing his de­ci­sion at the time, Es­pinet had ex­plained that ex­perts re­cruit­ed to as­sess the per­for­mance ca­pac­i­ty of the com­pa­ny’s as­sets found that, in com­par­i­son to oth­er com­pa­nies in the in­dus­try, Petrotrin ranked last and that un­der Petrotrin’s op­er­a­tions, its bal­ance sheet was de­te­ri­o­rat­ing.

He said the com­pa­ny re­quired a cash in­jec­tion of $25 bil­lion to re­fresh its in­fra­struc­ture and re­pay its debt, not­ing that this mon­ey could not be fund­ed ini­tial­ly and that it was im­pos­si­ble to keep the re­fin­ery work­ing.

Es­pinet had said “bad in­vest­ments,” like the World Gas to Liq­uid Plant, ex­ac­er­bat­ed Petrotrin’s prob­lem.

The gov­ern­ment looked at all op­tions, Es­pinet had said, but there was no al­ter­na­tive.

The re­fin­ery was shut down on No­vem­ber 30, 2018, un­der then prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s gov­ern­ment.

This move re­sult­ed in 4,626 per­ma­nent and tem­po­rary work­ers los­ing their jobs.

The gov­ern­ment al­so had to pay out $2.6 bil­lion in VSEP pack­ages to the af­fect­ed work­ers and promised to give them land as part of the ter­mi­na­tion ben­e­fits.

In March, res­i­dents of Mara­bel­la told Guardian Me­dia they were ea­ger­ly an­tic­i­pat­ing the re­open­ing of the Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery as the Gov­ern­ment ad­vanced talks with a slate of in­ter­na­tion­al and re­gion­al in­vestors, rais­ing cau­tious op­ti­mism that South Trinidad could be on the cusp of long-await­ed eco­nom­ic re­vival.

Back then, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal re­vealed ne­go­ti­a­tions were un­der­way with sev­er­al ma­jor play­ers, in­clud­ing Chevron of the Unit­ed States, the Na­tion­al Chi­na Off­shore Oil Cor­po­ra­tion, Nige­ria-based Oan­do, In­di­an Oil Cor­po­ra­tion and the Oil­field Work­ers Trade Union’s Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gies and Tech­nolo­gies, which had sub­mit­ted a new pro­pos­al for con­sid­er­a­tion.

But Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice (MSJ) leader David Ab­du­lah, who served as a mem­ber of for­mer Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary Sel­wyn Lash­ley’s team to ex­plore op­tions for the re­fin­ery, told Guardian Me­dia the re­fin­ery should nev­er have been closed.

Ab­du­lah shared a sim­i­lar view with Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar that Petrotrin was shut down to get rid of the OW­TU and their col­lec­tive agree­ments.

He said “a large in­vest­ment would have to be made” to get the re­fin­ery’s plants up and run­ning.

“It would re­quire a lot of work. So that’s go­ing to take nine months to a year or more to get the plants in a state of readi­ness. So ob­vi­ous­ly peo­ple are go­ing to be em­ployed in that process…many of them will be em­ployed by con­trac­tors.”

Ab­du­lah said the com­pa­ny that wins the bid to run the re­fin­ery can em­ploy for­mer Petrotrin re­fin­ery op­er­a­tors, elec­tri­cians and com­pres­sor me­chan­ics based on their knowl­edge and ex­pe­ri­ence.

“So I ex­pect­ed that they would be among the first to be hired. But how that process is go­ing to be rolled out, I can’t say. But cer­tain­ly jobs will be cre­at­ed.”

Guardian Me­dia en­quired from OW­TU’s ed­u­ca­tion and re­search of­fi­cer, Ozzie War­wick, whether for­mer Petrotrin work­ers would need re­train­ing if they were of­fered jobs in the re­fin­ery and, if so, who would cov­er the cost, but he did not re­spond.

ECA: Have a sol­id busi­ness mod­el

The Em­ploy­ers Con­sul­ta­tive As­so­ci­a­tion (ECA) has made it clear that the restart of the Petrotrin re­fin­ery must be hinged on “a sol­id, com­mer­cial­ly and fi­nan­cial­ly sus­tain­able busi­ness mod­el.”

They al­so in­sist that all jobs cre­at­ed or re­stored in the re­fin­ery’s re­open­ing “must be sup­port­ed by en­dur­ing op­er­a­tions that can last so that work­ers, tax­pay­ers, and the wider na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty are not ex­posed to avoid­able un­cer­tain­ty.”

Ac­knowl­edg­ing the pro­found im­pact the clo­sure would have had on the af­fect­ed work­ers, their fam­i­lies, sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ties, busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ty and the wider eco­nom­ic ecosys­tem, the ECA said that while they were not in a po­si­tion to as­sess the vi­a­bil­i­ty of any restart de­ci­sion at this time, “such mat­ters must be ap­proached with re­al­ism, trans­paren­cy and care­ful plan­ning.”

The as­so­ci­a­tion viewed any ini­tia­tive that has the po­ten­tial to stim­u­late eco­nom­ic growth, cre­ate sus­tain­able em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties, at­tract in­vest­ment and strength­en na­tion­al pro­duc­tiv­i­ty as a pos­i­tive de­vel­op­ment for the coun­try.

En­er­gy Cham­ber: Put the as­set to pro­duc­tive and eco­nom­ic use

In a state­ment is­sued to Guardian Me­dia in June, the En­er­gy Cham­ber said it sup­port­ed the re­fin­ery’s re­open­ing “to put the as­set to pro­duc­tive and eco­nom­ic use.”

“Giv­en the size of the in­vest­ment need­ed, it is pos­si­ble that the in­vest­ment can come from an in­ter­na­tion­al in­vestor, though lo­cal pri­vate-sec­tor in­volve­ment would al­so be wel­comed,” the state­ment said.

It not­ed that be­fore its clo­sure, the cham­ber said the re­fin­ery served as an eco­nom­ic an­chor for South Trinidad and fence­line com­mu­ni­ties.

“As a ma­jor cus­tomer for the ser­vice com­pa­nies and con­trac­tors that make up our mem­ber­ship, its clo­sure led to a sub­stan­tial loss of di­rect and in­di­rect em­ploy­ment, im­pact­ing both Petrotrin work­ers and the broad­er con­trac­tor work­force. The prospect of a restart is there­fore es­pe­cial­ly time­ly, co­in­cid­ing with a slump in down­stream sec­tor ac­tiv­i­ty, methanol and am­mo­nia, that has fur­ther con­tract­ed op­por­tu­ni­ties for con­trac­tors and our mem­bers. To­geth­er, these con­di­tions cre­ate a com­pelling case for re­newed in­vest­ment.”

While the re­fin­ery’s re­open­ing is a worth­while en­deav­our, the Cham­ber not­ed it car­ries sig­nif­i­cant risk, and the mas­sive cap­i­tal in­vest­ment re­quired must be care­ful­ly de­ployed and man­aged.

“A pri­ma­ry con­sid­er­a­tion is the sheer up­front cost of safe­ly restart­ing the fa­cil­i­ty. Be­cause the re­fin­ery has been dor­mant for sev­er­al years, en­sur­ing the struc­tur­al and op­er­a­tional in­tegri­ty of all process fa­cil­i­ties and pipelines is crit­i­cal be­fore any op­er­a­tions can re­sume. Process safe­ty and as­set in­tegri­ty dur­ing the restart will be vi­tal and must be strict­ly man­aged to en­sure long-term safe op­er­a­tions.”

Be­yond the phys­i­cal restart, an­oth­er ma­jor hur­dle, the Cham­ber said, is se­cur­ing suf­fi­cient vol­umes of crude oil.

“The re­fin­ery re­quires a through­put of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 150,000 bar­rels of oil per day, yet cur­rent do­mes­tic pro­duc­tion stands at rough­ly 55,000 bar­rels per day, mean­ing near­ly 100,000 bar­rels must be im­port­ed. His­tor­i­cal­ly, this short­fall was met us­ing sources from Venezuela, broad­er Latin Amer­i­ca, Cana­da, Rus­sia, and Africa. How­ev­er, this chal­lenge al­so high­lights an op­por­tu­ni­ty to grow do­mes­tic pro­duc­tion through ad­just­ments to the fis­cal regime and po­ten­tial deep­wa­ter ex­plo­ration, such as Exxon­Mo­bil’s UD1 block.”

Com­pound­ing these chal­lenges is a mat­ter of op­er­a­tional ef­fi­cien­cy, which will ul­ti­mate­ly dic­tate the fa­cil­i­ty’s long-term vi­a­bil­i­ty, the Cham­ber said.

“A re­fin­ery’s key met­ric is its re­fin­ing mar­gin, the dif­fer­ence be­tween the pur­chase price of crude oil and the sell­ing price of its re­fined prod­ucts. Glob­al­ly, re­fin­ing mar­gins have been de­pressed, forc­ing mod­ern op­er­a­tors to be ex­treme­ly ef­fi­cient with their cap­i­tal ex­pen­di­ture and dai­ly op­er­a­tions just to sur­vive. Trinidad and To­ba­go will not be in­su­lat­ed from these tight mar­gins, mak­ing ef­fec­tive, lean man­age­ment para­mount.”

De­spite these chal­lenges, the Cham­ber said restart­ing presents a gen­uine op­por­tu­ni­ty for the coun­try across sev­er­al di­men­sions.

“Strate­gi­cal­ly, it can se­cure our do­mes­tic fu­el sup­ply while boost­ing ex­ports of fi­nal prod­ucts like gaso­line and diesel. Eco­nom­i­cal­ly, it has the po­ten­tial to re­vi­talise south Trinidad, al­low­ing lo­cal con­trac­tors to pro­vide ser­vices and re­cov­er rev­enue lost since 2018.”

The state­ment said con­trac­tors will cer­tain­ly wel­come the restart, as it will con­tin­ue to grow lo­cal con­tent, giv­ing ser­vice com­pa­nies new op­por­tu­ni­ties to ex­pand their do­mes­tic vol­ume of busi­ness.

“A restart of­fers a chance to re-em­ploy many in­di­vid­u­als who pre­vi­ous­ly worked at the fa­cil­i­ty. While re-at­tract­ing those skilled work­ers may be dif­fi­cult, it is a nec­es­sary and worth­while ex­er­cise to en­sure the re­fin­ery’s suc­cess­ful re­turn to op­er­a­tion.”

Mooni­lal’s moves

In the first quar­ter of 2026, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal con­firmed on­go­ing dis­cus­sions with In­di­an Oil Cor­po­ra­tion, US en­er­gy gi­ant Chevron Cor­po­ra­tion and oth­er in­ter­na­tion­al and re­gion­al com­pa­nies to se­cure in­vest­ment and tech­ni­cal sup­port for the re­fin­ery’s restart.

By March, an Ital­ian en­gi­neer­ing firm se­cured a US$50 mil­lion con­tract to con­duct a re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion study on Petrotrin’s re­fin­ery.

How­ev­er, the Gov­ern­ment has dis­tanced it­self from this arrange­ment.

In a state­ment on its web­site, MAIRE an­nounced that its sub­sidiary Tec­n­i­mont Ser­vices had been award­ed the con­tract.

Last No­vem­ber, Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of En­er­gy Ernesto Ke­sar promised the for­mer Petrotrin work­ers that they would re­ceive their lands.

He said 2,814 for­mer work­ers had ap­plied to the Land Set­tle­ment Agency for parcels of land, but on­ly 238 had been is­sued let­ters of com­mit­ment.

Con­tribut­ing to the Mis­cel­la­neous Pro­vi­sions Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um, Paria Fu­el Trad­ing and Guaracara Re­fin­ing Vest­ing Amend­ment Bill in Par­lia­ment on June 18, Ke­sar dis­closed that a to­tal of 1,237 Petrotrin pen­sion­ers had died be­tween Jan­u­ary 1, 2019, and May 31, 2026 “be­cause they lost their valu­able ben­e­fit called the med­ical plan that was tak­en away, stripped away, emas­cu­lat­ed and re­moved from them and they re­placed it with some poul­try in­sur­ance.”

Of the 1,237, he said, 80 were fe­males.

The Point Fortin MP said he ob­tained the fig­ures from the Petrotrin Em­ploy­ees Pen­sion Plan.

“Some of these pen­sion­ers per­ished be­cause they had ill­ness­es that on­ly the med­ical plan could have sus­tained. This is an­oth­er wicked­i­ty that the PNM per­pe­trat­ed on Petrotrin work­ers,” Ke­sar said.

Changes to Petrotrin over the years

In 1993, Petrotrin was formed from an amal­ga­ma­tion of Shell, Tex­a­co, British Pe­tro­le­um and Trinidad Tesoro, all of which played im­por­tant roles in the de­vel­op­ment of the en­er­gy sec­tor.

The state-owned com­pa­ny em­ployed 5,322 per­ma­nent and tem­po­rary work­ers.

The re­fin­ery’s ca­pac­i­ty was 168,000 bar­rels of crude oil per day.

How­ev­er, be­tween 2006 and 2016, Petrotrin’s oil pro­duc­tion start­ed to de­cline.

In 2017, then per­ma­nent sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of En­er­gy, Sel­wyn Lash­ley, was ap­point­ed to chair a six-mem­ber com­mit­tee to re­view Petrotrin’s op­er­a­tions and put for­ward rec­om­men­da­tions for its re­struc­tur­ing.

A 2018 re­port com­piled by the team stat­ed that Petrotrin had been down­grad­ed on sev­er­al oc­ca­sions by Moody’s and Stan­dard and Poor’s, owed the Board of In­land Rev­enue $1.2 bil­lion re­lat­ed to the mon­eti­sa­tion of crude oil and was un­prof­itable.

The com­pa­ny al­so failed to pay div­i­dends be­tween 2011 and 2015, while its debt had reached $12.51 bil­lion in 2016.

There was al­so a lack of re­turns on in­vest­ments in cap­i­tal-in­ten­sive projects, which had stran­gled the State-owned com­pa­ny.

Row­ley and his Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment gov­ern­ment de­cid­ed that clos­ing the re­fin­ery was the on­ly way out.

Af­ter its clo­sure, Petrotrin was re­struc­tured un­der the Trinidad Pe­tro­le­um Hold­ings Ltd (TPHL), with four sub­sidiaries, Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny, Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny, Guaracara Re­fin­ery and Petrotrin Com­pa­ny.

Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gies and Tech­nolo­gies Com­pa­ny Ltd, owned by the Oil­field Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU), made sev­er­al bids to ac­quire the moth­balled re­fin­ery but was re­ject­ed by Row­ley’s ad­min­is­tra­tion.

When the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress was elect­ed in­to of­fice last April, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar reaf­firmed her com­mit­ment to restart the re­fin­ery, which was one of her ma­jor cam­paign promis­es.

For­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine was ap­point­ed to chair a Re­fin­ery Restart Com­mit­tee tasked with re­view­ing the re­fin­ery’s tech­ni­cal as­sess­ment and readi­ness.

Last De­cem­ber, Ram­nar­ine pre­sent­ed Per­sad-Bisses­sar with an in­ter­im re­port on the re­fin­ery that ex­am­ined the tech­ni­cal and com­mer­cial fea­si­bil­i­ty, es­ti­mat­ed cap­i­tal re­quire­ments and hu­man re­source de­mands.

The re­port not­ed that the restart of the re­fin­ery was tech­ni­cal­ly, com­mer­cial­ly and fi­nan­cial­ly vi­able.

It was rec­om­mend­ed that the restart­ing process be un­der­tak­en in four phas­es.

Guardian Me­dia sent Ram­nar­ine a What­sApp mes­sage about the re­fin­ery’s op­er­a­tional cost, but he re­mained tight-lipped.

“We are bound by a con­fi­den­tial agree­ment that re­mains in ef­fect. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, I can’t com­ment,” Ram­nar­ine stat­ed.