DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

The Op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress has ex­pressed se­ri­ous con­cerns re­gard­ing the bid­ding process for the Petrotrin re­fin­ery in Pointe-a-Pierre, and is de­mand­ing that the pro­ce­dure be scrapped en­tire­ly and that a crim­i­nal foren­sic in­ves­ti­ga­tion be ini­ti­at­ed.

Speak­ing in the Up­per House yes­ter­day dur­ing the 2025 Bud­get de­bate, UNC Sen­a­tor Wade Mark made the call as he ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of at­tempt­ing to ma­nip­u­late the process to favour In­di­an busi­ness­man Naveen Jin­dal.

He said the call was be­ing made af­ter the UNC had gath­ered back­ground in­for­ma­tion on the three com­pa­nies short­list­ed to bid for the re­fin­ery.

In his 2024/2025 Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert an­nounced that Cab­i­net had short­list­ed three com­pa­nies from a to­tal of ten in­ter­est­ed par­ties. The short­list­ed bid­ders con­sist of CRO Con­sor­tium, a Trinidad-based en­ti­ty com­pris­ing DR Com­modi­ties Ltd, Chemie-Tech, and Ocala; iN­ca En­er­gy LLC from the Unit­ed States and Dan­do PLC from Nige­ria. The se­lec­tion process was con­duct­ed by Sco­tia Cap­i­tal (USA) in part­ner­ship with an eval­u­a­tion com­mit­tee.

Jin­dal, an in­dus­tri­al­ist and chair­man of Jin­dal Steel and Pow­er, was ini­tial­ly among the ten com­pa­nies in­ter­est­ed in ac­quir­ing the re­fin­ery. How­ev­er, he with­drew his in­ter­est in a let­ter to Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley dat­ed Ju­ly 26, cit­ing “char­ac­ter as­sas­si­na­tion” from the Op­po­si­tion fol­low­ing his vis­it to Trinidad on June 17.

Jin­dal de­scribed the Op­po­si­tion’s re­ac­tion as “un­just at­tacks” and raised con­cerns about the po­ten­tial in­sta­bil­i­ty these ac­tions could cre­ate for in­vestors.

De­spite his with­draw­al, Mark high­light­ed Jin­dal’s con­nec­tions to board mem­bers at DR Com­modi­ties, which is the par­ent com­pa­ny of a lo­cal en­ti­ty in In­dia. He point­ed out that two fam­i­ly mem­bers of Jin­dal are on the board of di­rec­tors of DR Com­modi­ties.

“That is what we are see­ing—two mem­bers of the Jin­dal fam­i­ly on the board of di­rec­tors of the par­ent com­pa­ny called DR Com­modi­ties. So, Mr Pres­i­dent, we are call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to scrap that en­tire process,” he said.

Mark al­so voiced con­cerns about the oth­er mem­bers of CRO Con­sor­tium, specif­i­cal­ly Ocala, a Venezue­lan com­pa­ny en­gaged in oil and gas ac­tiv­i­ties that is cur­rent­ly un­der sanc­tion by the Unit­ed States.

“Ocala is a Venezue­lan com­pa­ny en­gag­ing in oil and gas. It’s a hold­ings com­pa­ny, Mr Pres­i­dent, that is sanc­tioned by the Unit­ed States. How come this Gov­ern­ment is short­list­ing a com­pa­ny that is sanc­tioned by the Unit­ed States to take over our Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery? Mr Pres­i­dent, you know what has hap­pened, Jin­dal went through the front door and he came through the back door.”

Mark al­so not­ed that CRO Con­sor­tium does not ap­pear to be reg­is­tered in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“What we found in­ter­est­ing is that when we did a search for CRO Con­sor­tium it yield­ed no re­sults,” he said.

“It means that CRO Con­sor­tium is not legal­ly in­cor­po­rat­ed un­der the laws of Trinidad and To­ba­go and there­fore the ques­tion must be asked, if this com­pa­ny is not legal­ly in­cor­po­rat­ed un­der the laws of Trinidad and To­ba­go, how come this com­pa­ny was short­list­ed by the Cab­i­net?”

Giv­en these is­sues, Mark as­sert­ed that the bid­ding process should be restart­ed from scratch.

This marks the sec­ond oc­ca­sion this month that calls have been made for the Petrotrin bid­ding process to be scrapped. On Oc­to­ber 6, Pa­tri­ot­ic Ser­vices Co Ltd, which is head­ed by the Oil­field Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU), al­so called for the process to be halt­ed and for a new process free from Gov­ern­ment in­ter­fer­ence.

This came af­ter En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young had claimed Pa­tri­ot­ic was dis­qual­i­fied from the process be­cause it ten­dered fake doc­u­men­ta­tion dur­ing the bid.

Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to reach En­er­gy Min­is­ter Young, who is cur­rent­ly act­ing as Prime Min­is­ter, for com­ment on Mark’s claims, but re­ceived no re­sponse up to press time last evening.