January 19, 2021

REJECTED: Government Passes On OWTU For Sale Of Petrotrin Refinery

By Newsroom

Another loss for the Oilfield Workers Trade Union, as Cabinet has once more rejected the bid by its company,Patriotic Energies and Technologies, for purchase of the  Petrotrin Refinery.

At a press briefing this morning where he broke the news, Energy Minister Franklin Khan said the valuation committee found that Patriotic’s relationship with the relevant financial institution, RBC, was “unworkable”.

“The key issue here is that the government wants the refinery restarted but the government has no equity to put into the refinery and it doesn’t want to be part of that refinery process. We wanted to run without state capital, without state interjection and without state funding…Government is not going to come back in situation where we recreate a new Petrotrin,” he said. 

Tuesday’s decision followed a counter proposal from the OWTU submitted in October last year after the original bid was rejected for similar reasons. 

The decision was determined by an independent valuation committee under the instruction of Prime Minister Dr. Keith Rowley. 

Following the rejection of the bid, Minister Khan says the next step will be to return to the open market seeking a new buyer who can meet all of the requirements for purchase of the state asset.

Trinidad Petroleum been given a three week timeline to submit a proposal for the canvasing of the current market.

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