KEVON FELMINE
kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

“Row­ley lie!”

It is a bold state­ment from Oil­fields’ Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU) pres­i­dent gen­er­al An­cel Ro­get, deny­ing claims by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley that the union re­fused an Em­ploy­ee Stock Own­er­ship Pro­gramme (ESOP) for out­go­ing Petrotrin em­ploy­ees.
Dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence at the OW­TU’s Para­mount Build­ing head­quar­ters, in San Fer­nan­do, on Mon­day, Ro­get ac­cused Row­ley of ped­dling un­truths.

He claimed Row­ley at­tacked the OW­TU dur­ing a meet­ing at the San Juan North Sec­ondary School on Sat­ur­day.

He said the at­tack came be­cause the OW­TU high­light­ed that S&P Glob­al Rat­ings down­grad­ed Trinidad Pe­tro­le­um Hold­ing Ltd (TPHL) to B+ from BB and the is­sue-lev­el rat­ing to B+ from BB on its 9.75 per cent se­nior se­cured notes due 2026. S&P warned that TPHL breached an ad­min­is­tra­tive covenant re­lat­ed to the re­port­ing of its 2019 au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments.
At the meet­ing, Row­ley said as Petrotrin un­der­went re­struc­tur­ing, Cab­i­net was ready to of­fer em­ploy­ees stock own­er­ship in Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny and Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny. But to his hor­ror and shock, the OW­TU re­fused. 
“I as Prime Min­is­ter was pre­pared then to of­fer as much and to en­cour­age the Cab­i­net to of­fer them up to 20 per cent of the new com­pa­ny. Had they ac­cept­ed that of­fer, they would have been own­ers of 20 per cent of that $3.6 bil­lion, but they had no faith, no con­fi­dence, and as a re­sult of that, their lead­ers led them away,” Row­ley said.
In­stead, the OW­TU in­cor­po­rat­ed Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gies and Tech­nolo­gies Com­pa­ny to bid for the old Petrotrin re­fin­ery. But Ro­get said this was a lie.
“There was nev­er any of­fer then or oth­er­wise to the union for em­ploy­ees to own shares, stock-own­er­ship in the new arrange­ment af­ter they would have shut down Petrotrin,” Ro­get said.

Play­ing an ex­cerpt of Row­ley say­ing that Gov­ern­ment would of­fer the OW­TU the first op­tion and favourable terms to own and op­er­ate the re­fin­ing as­sets, Ro­get said it was an at­tempt to call a bluff.

The OW­TU ini­tial­ly de­clined the of­fer but sent a let­ter in­di­cat­ing its in­tent to pur­chase.
Row­ley al­so said on Sat­ur­day that when in­ter­est­ed par­ties made of­fers for the re­fin­ery, Pa­tri­ot­ic alone bid cash.

He said Pa­tri­ot­ic did not have a cent to pay its lawyer but want­ed to buy a re­fin­ery deemed un­pro­duc­tive and a mon­ey los­er to a gov­ern­ment.
“You want to run it with no mon­ey and ha­rass­ing me every sin­gle day about the re­fin­ery un­til you could be cheer­ing that Petrotrin has been down­grad­ed.”
While Pa­tri­ot­ic had fi­nanciers, there was sig­nif­i­cant pres­sure in ne­go­ti­at­ing the pur­chase.

Ro­get said the deal could not go through be­cause TPHL bor­rowed heav­i­ly us­ing the re­fin­ery as­sets as col­lat­er­al.

He said Gov­ern­ment grant­ed Pa­tri­ot­ic a 45-day ex­ten­sion to raise US$500 mil­lion in 2021 as it could not fol­low through with its ini­tial of­fer of a three years mora­to­ri­um on pay­ment and 10-year term.

He said the ex­ten­sions and com­ments were to fool the pub­lic in­to think­ing they were work­ing with the Pa­tri­ot­ic and to win the 2020 Gen­er­al Elec­tion. 
He said Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert even ad­mit­ted that Gov­ern­ment could not raise US$500 mil­lion in a short time. Af­ter the last 15 days of the ex­ten­sion, Pa­tri­ot­ic sub­mit­ted an­oth­er of­fer to Im­bert for Cab­i­net con­sid­er­a­tion. Ro­get said there was no re­sponse. 
“When he said that we did not have mon­ey, I want to say very calm­ly this morn­ing that he lied. The Cab­i­net is yet to re­spond to a pro­pos­al com­ing from the com­pa­ny, iden­ti­fy­ing, al­beit it would have been dif­fi­cult, but iden­ti­fy­ing that it was will­ing to stand with us.

“They closed off all dis­cus­sions be­cause they knew what they want­ed to do. They knew why they shut down Petrotrin,” Ro­get said.
Last Oc­to­ber, Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy Af­fairs Stu­art Young said three in­ter­na­tion­al firms were bid­ding for Guaracara.
Row­ley said he ap­point­ed two OW­TU mem­bers on an eval­u­a­tion com­mit­tee, who left as soon as they re­alised the out­come.
But Ro­get said this was an­oth­er lie.

He said for­mer gen­er­al sec­re­tary David Ab­du­lah and Gre­go­ry Marchan were the OW­TU rep­re­sen­ta­tives on the En­er­gy Sub-Com­mit­tee of the Cab­i­net to re­view the op­er­a­tions of Petrotrin in 2017.

He said both Ab­du­lah and Marchan were there to present the find­ings, which nev­er rec­om­mend­ed the shut down of Petrotrin.