Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

A team head­ed by T&T’s High Com­mis­sion­er to the UK, Vish­nu Dhan­paul (the for­mer Fi­nance Min­istry’s per­ma­nent sec­re­tary), will eval­u­ate pro­pos­als for the Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery af­ter the end of the month. The pro­pos­als were sent for­ward by Trinidad Pe­tro­le­um Hold­ings Lim­it­ed (TPHL).

Tourism Min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell, who gave the in­for­ma­tion in the Sen­ate yes­ter­day, added, “To make it abun­dant­ly clear, nei­ther the Ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter nor the Min­is­ter of En­er­gy has been in­volved in any re­quest for pro­pos­als (RFP) process or any eval­u­a­tion of pro­pos­al process. To date, the re­ceipt of pro­pos­als has been han­dled and man­aged by TPHL.”

Mitchell replied to UNC Sen­a­tor Wade Mark’s mo­tion on the ad­journ­ment, which sought an up­date on the re­fin­ery. Mark, slam­ming Gov­ern­ment for the re­fin­ery’s clo­sure, de­mand­ed whether Gov­ern­ment was sell­ing it to cor­rup­tion-ac­cused In­di­an busi­ness­man Naveen Jin­dal.

He ques­tioned how Jin­dal learned of the op­por­tu­ni­ty, how long talks were tak­ing place with him, if Jin­dal was part of the “Venezuela-PNM con­nec­tion,” and what was the role of T&T’s New Del­hi High Com­mis­sion and For­eign Af­fairs Min­istry. “Come clean—are you ‘in bed’ with Jin­dal sell­ing our re­fin­ery for a song and dance?” Mark de­mand­ed.

Mitchell said, “I’d ask the UNC to stop try­ing to ma­lign and chase away all po­ten­tial in­vestors to T&T. You’re not do­ing the PNM any­thing; you’re act­ing in­im­i­cal to cit­i­zens’ in­ter­ests.”

Mitchell de­tailed the re­fin­ery’s years-long loss­es “be­gin­ning un­der the UNC in 2014,” prompt­ing clo­sure.

He re­capped Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gies and Tech­nol­gies’ failed bids to ac­quire the re­fin­ery. “Gov­ern­ment bent over back­wards to work with the union com­pa­ny’s pro­pos­als, even agree­ing to ex­clu­siv­i­ty pe­ri­ods, but the pro­pos­als were sim­ply not fea­si­ble.”

Mitchell said TPHL and the Gov­ern­ment con­tin­ued to re­ceive un­so­licit­ed pro­pos­als from many en­ti­ties for restart­ing the re­fin­ery, and the TPHL group has con­tin­ued to ex­pend mon­ey to prop­er­ly pre­serve it.

“TPHL set up a process that in­cludes the use of in­de­pen­dent ad­vis­ers to analyse and eval­u­ate pro­pos­als that have been made over time. The Gov­ern­ment has made it clear both do­mes­ti­cal­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly that T&T has a re­fin­ery avail­able for any en­ti­ty that puts for­ward a work­able and fea­si­ble pro­pos­al that makes sense,” Mitchell added.

Mitchell said that with­in re­cent months, TPHL has re­ceived a num­ber of pro­pos­als for restart­ing of the re­fin­ery. “As a re­sult, TPHL’s Board de­cid­ed to have their ex­perts, in­clud­ing in­de­pen­dent in­ter­na­tion­al ex­perts, eval­u­ate the pro­pos­als with an in­ten­tion to then ad­vise the board as to the fea­si­bil­i­ty of these pro­pos­als.

“The Ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter, on re­cent work­ing vis­its to Ghana and In­dia, pre­sent­ed gen­er­al­ly to au­di­ences that T&T has a re­fin­ery avail­able for op­er­a­tion.” “As a re­sult, in­quiries and ex­pres­sions of in­ter­est were gen­er­at­ed. TPHL agreed to re­ceive pro­pos­als un­til the end of Ju­ly, which will then be eval­u­at­ed by its ex­perts, in­clud­ing its in­de­pen­dent in­ter­na­tion­al ex­perts, and if there are any fea­si­ble pro­pos­als there, then to move them for­ward for fur­ther eval­u­a­tion.” Mitchell said the Cab­i­net set up an of­fi­cial eval­u­a­tion com­mit­tee to be chaired by High Com­mis­sion­er Dhan­paul. It will al­so in­clude a per­ma­nent sec­re­tary from the En­er­gy Min­istry and oth­er ex­perts, in­clud­ing pri­vate sec­tor ex­perts, to eval­u­ate any pro­pos­als for restart­ing the re­fin­ery that are sent for­ward af­ter the end of Ju­ly by TPHL.

“Ac­cord­ing­ly, the pop­u­la­tion should ig­nore the Op­po­si­tion UNC’s fran­tic, des­per­ate ram­blings sur­round­ing the re­fin­ery’s fu­ture,” Mitchell added.

“The Gov­ern­ment hopes that by the end of Ju­ly, fea­si­ble pro­pos­als will be re­ceived to then go through the stat­ed eval­u­a­tion process­es.”

In 2019, the Fi­nance Min­istry an­nounced that Dhan­paul (then Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary at the min­istry) would lead a ten-mem­ber team to eval­u­ate five of­fers for the re­fin­ery.