The trade union move­ment has joined forces with the Con­fed­er­a­tion of Re­gion­al Busi­ness Cham­bers (CR­BC) to seek fund­ing from in­ter­na­tion­al fi­nan­cial mar­kets in a bid to restart the Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery.

An­nounc­ing the col­lab­o­ra­tion dur­ing a press brief­ing at the Oil­field Work­ers Trade Union (OW­TU) head­quar­ters in San Fer­nan­do on Wednes­day night, OW­TU pres­i­dent gen­er­al An­cel Ro­get said the dis­cus­sions were in the ear­ly stages, but they in­tend to present a de­tailed plan to the Gov­ern­ment’s min­is­te­r­i­al team and then to the na­tion.

Michael An­nisette, gen­er­al sec­re­tary of the Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­tre (NATUC) and pres­i­dent of the Sea­men Wa­ter­front Work­ers Trade Union Move­ment, along with Christo­pher Street, pres­i­dent gen­er­al of the Na­tion­al Union of Gov­ern­ment and Fed­er­at­ed Work­ers, were present at the brief­ing.

Ro­get said their dis­cus­sions with the Con­fed­er­a­tion fo­cused on work­ing to­geth­er to re­vi­talise the en­er­gy sec­tor. He said their pri­or­i­ty is re­fur­bish­ing and restart­ing op­er­a­tions at the re­fin­ery.

Jai Lelad­hars­ingh, CR­BC’s co­or­di­na­tor, re­called that nine years ago, the coun­try faced a “very dark eco­nom­ic space”, com­pound­ed by the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

“The first thing we are look­ing at is the restart­ing of the Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery or what was for­mer­ly the Petrotrin re­fin­ery. We need to kick-start the econ­o­my, and we need to bring things to a cer­tain lev­el of com­pet­i­tive­ness and to re­turn Trinidad and To­ba­go, as the en­er­gy hub of the Caribbean, the cen­tre for en­er­gy com­pet­i­tive­ness,” he said.

Leladars­ingh ac­knowl­edged that restart­ing the re­fin­ery re­quired a sub­stan­tial in­vest­ment of bil­lions of US dol­lars. He said they have a plan in place to source fund­ing through in­ter­na­tion­al fi­nan­cial mar­kets.

Ri­car­do Mo­hammed, CR­BC’s vice chair­man, ex­plained that they would be as­sist­ing the trade unions in re­vamp­ing pro­grammes geared to­wards the re­open­ing of the re­fin­ery, in­clud­ing hu­man re­sources, train­ing and main­tain­ing pro­duc­tiv­i­ty with sus­tain­abil­i­ty.

Ang­ie Jairam, CR­BC di­rec­tor and Fyz­abad Cham­ber pres­i­dent, was con­fi­dent that the col­lab­o­ra­tion would “make a big con­tri­bu­tion to the up­lift­ment of every cit­i­zen.” 

Mean­while, Ro­get called for an ur­gent re­view and au­dit of how con­tracts were award­ed at Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um and Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny Ltd as he claimed there were ad hoc and bi­ased arrange­ments con­cern­ing con­tracts.

The Petrotrin re­fin­ery was closed on No­vem­ber 30, 2018, by the Dr Kei­th Row­ley-led PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion, cit­ing high debt, in­ef­fi­cien­cy, and de­clin­ing pro­duc­tiv­i­ty. Fol­low­ing this, the OW­TU’s Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gies and Tech­nolo­gies Com­pa­ny at­tempt­ed to ac­quire the re­fin­ery be­tween 2019 and 2021, but their bids were un­suc­cess­ful. In­di­an busi­ness­man Naveen Jin­dal had in­di­cat­ed his in­ter­est in the re­fin­ery, but with­drew in Ju­ly 2024, fol­low­ing heavy crit­i­cism from the then UNC Op­po­si­tion and unions.

In Feb­ru­ary, for­mer En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young an­nounced Oan­do PLC as the pre­ferred bid­der for the re­fin­ery. How­ev­er, the UNC Gov­ern­ment had in­di­cat­ed it would not ho­n­our the deal.