On De­cem­ber 5, 2025, the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter (OPM) is­sued a state­ment in which it com­ment­ed on its re­ceipt of the In­ter­im Re­port of the Re­fin­ery Restart Com­mit­tee, which was chaired by for­mer Min­is­ter of En­er­gy Mr. Kevin Ram­nar­ine.

The Ram­nar­ine Com­mit­tee re­port not­ed that de­spite its clo­sure at the end of No­vem­ber 2018, “the restart of the re­fin­ery is tech­ni­cal­ly, com­mer­cial­ly and fi­nan­cial­ly vi­able giv­en the cur­rent mar­ket de­mands for re­fined prod­ucts and crude avail­abil­i­ty.”

The re­port al­so not­ed that the clo­sure of the re­fin­ery had led to degra­da­tion of the units and sup­port­ing util­i­ties and off­sites, adding that, as a re­sult, “time was of the essence as fur­ther de­te­ri­o­ra­tion of the units and sup­port­ing util­i­ties would even­tu­al­ly ren­der a restart un­eco­nom­ic.”

The OPM state­ment out­lined, “The Prime Min­is­ter has di­rect­ed the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries (MEEI) to un­der­take a re­view of the in­ter­im re­port and pro­pose pos­si­ble op­tions and mod­els to adopt, giv­en the con­clu­sions of the com­mit­tee. The Guaracara re­fin­ery re­mains a sig­nif­i­cant na­tion­al as­set with strong eco­nom­ic, em­ploy­ment, and en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty po­ten­tial. A Fi­nal Fea­si­bil­i­ty and Restart Rec­om­men­da­tion for Op­tions is ex­pect­ed to be sub­mit­ted to the Cab­i­net very ear­ly in 2026.”

So, more than four months ago, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar in­di­cat­ed that the restart of the re­fin­ery was com­mer­cial­ly and fi­nan­cial vi­able, but that “time was of the essence”and that it was the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the MEEI, head­ed by the re­doubtable Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, to re­view the Ram­nar­ine Com­mit­tee re­port, pro­pose pos­si­ble op­tions and mod­els to achieve the goal of restart­ing the re­fin­ery and de­liv­er a re­port of fi­nal fea­si­bil­i­ty and restart op­tions “very ear­ly in 2026.”

In oth­er words, it is Dr Mooni­lal’s re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to eval­u­ate the Ram­nar­ine Com­mit­tee’s in­ter­im re­port and de­liv­er to Cab­i­net, for its con­sid­er­a­tion, a fi­nal re­port out­lin­ing the fea­si­bil­i­ty of restart­ing the re­fin­ery, a rec­om­men­da­tion for the op­tions avail­able to the Gov­ern­ment to restart the re­fin­ery and, one sup­pos­es, a time­line out­lin­ing how long it would take be­fore the fa­cil­i­ty is pro­duc­ing fu­els.

Some ques­tions arise from Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s De­cem­ber 5, 2025, state­ment:

1) Was ap­prox­i­mate­ly six weeks enough time for Dr Mooni­lal’s min­istry to ex­am­ine the Ram­nar­ine Com­mit­tee and pro­cure a fi­nal fea­si­bil­i­ty study for the re­fin­ery restart, giv­en that MEEI would, most like­ly, have need­ed to out­source that study to for­eign con­sul­tants such as Bech­tel, Wor­ley, Flu­or Cor­po­ra­tion and Gaffney, Cline & As­so­ciates?

2) As di­rect­ed by the Prime Min­is­ter, has the Min­istry of En­er­gy com­plet­ed the fi­nal fea­si­bil­i­ty and restart rec­om­men­da­tions, which was due “very ear­ly in 2026?” And if not, what progress has been made in fi­nal­is­ing the re­port?

3) Is Dr Mooni­lal con­vinced that a fair, le­gal, trans­par­ent and COM­PET­I­TIVE process is es­sen­tial to the se­lec­tion of the best pre­ferred op­er­a­tor OR does the Gov­ern­ment be­lieve it can de­ter­mine the best op­er­a­tor based on “ex­pres­sions of in­ter­est”?

That last point is ex­treme­ly im­por­tant to the suc­cess­ful out­come of the re­fin­ery restart ex­er­cise be­cause the Gov­ern­ment has spent much time in 2026, so far, talk­ing to en­er­gy com­pa­nies and get­ting ex­pres­sions of in­ter­est from them.

For ex­am­ple, in Jan­u­ary this year, Dr Mooni­lal led a del­e­ga­tion to the In­dia En­er­gy Week that in­clud­ed Kurt Ram­lal, chair­man of Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny; Gow­tam Ma­haraj, chair­man of Guaracara Re­fin­ing Com­pa­ny and Ter­rance Ali, se­nior chem­i­cal en­gi­neer (Ag) at the Min­istry of En­er­gy. Among the com­pa­nies en­gaged by the Gov­ern­ment were In­dia’s Re­liance In­dus­tries, US en­er­gy be­he­moth Exxon­Mo­bil, An­glo-Dutch gi­ant Shell, France’s To­tal En­er­gies and KBC En­gi­neer­ing, ac­cord­ing to a Feb­ru­ary 1, 2026, re­port in the T&T Guardian.

Then, on March 26, An­drea Perez-Sobers on Guardian Me­dia’s Busi­ness Watch pro­gramme re­port­ed Dr Mooni­lal as say­ing that the Gov­ern­ment was con­tin­u­ing dis­cus­sions with 10 in­ter­est­ed par­ties from Asia, Africa, Eu­rope, the US and the Caribbean with “fur­ther meet­ings ex­pect­ed.”

In late Feb­ru­ary, at the mar­gins of the 50th Cari­com Heads of Gov­ern­ment meet­ing in St Kitts and Nevis, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar held a bi­lat­er­al meet­ing with US Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio on deep­en­ing en­er­gy and se­cu­ri­ty co­op­er­a­tion with Wash­ing­ton.

Guardian Me­dia’s Da­reece Po­lo, who cov­ered the meet­ing, re­port­ed that Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the dis­cus­sions were built on pre­vi­ous en­gage­ments with US of­fi­cials.

“We fol­lowed up on some of those dis­cus­sions for fur­ther co­op­er­a­tion in en­er­gy and in se­cu­ri­ty. We dis­cussed the re­open­ing of the Trinidad (Petrotrin) re­fin­ery. As you know, we have been very se­ri­ous about get­ting that re­fin­ery re­opened.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said Ru­bio com­mit­ted to as­sist­ing in ad­vanc­ing the T&T Gov­ern­ment’s plans for the re­fin­ery.

“He agreed that he would put us on to their De­part­ment of En­er­gy to as­sist us in seek­ing to find the best part­ner to open that re­fin­ery,” she told re­porters.

T&T’s Prime Min­is­ter added that Dr Mooni­lal met with one prospec­tive part­ner, while she al­so held dis­cus­sions with an­oth­er in St Kitts. Ad­di­tion­al bi­lat­er­al talks were sched­uled, in­clud­ing with rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the African Ex­port-Im­port Bank.

“Of course, at the end of the day, we’ll choose the best that we think we can get,” she said.

De­ter­min­ing the best

* Is it that the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion be­lieves that talk­ing with po­ten­tial in­vestors at the mar­gins of ma­jor con­fer­ences, fol­low­ing which ex­pres­sions of in­ter­est are sub­mit­ted, is an ap­pro­pri­ate means of choos­ing the best po­ten­tial op­er­a­tor for the Guaracara re­fin­ery “that we think we can get,” as the Prime Min­is­ter put it?

* Giv­en the T&T leader’s state­ment on De­cem­ber 5, that “time was of the essence,” is the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion’s re­fin­ery se­lec­tion process go­ing to “choose the best that we think we can get,” based on ex­pres­sions of in­ter­est, with­out the for­mal process of a re­quest for pro­pos­als (RFP)?

* Is Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar go­ing to re­peat the mis­take made by for­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, who sought to en­gage with the de­ceased chair­man of San­dals Re­sorts In­ter­na­tion­al, Gor­don ‘Butch’ Stew­art, to build two ho­tels on en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly sen­si­tive prop­er­ties at No Man’s Land/Buc­coo in To­ba­go that was based on an un­com­pet­i­tive ex­pres­sion of in­ter­est?

* Is the cur­rent Prime Min­is­ter not con­cerned that in­for­mal ex­pres­sions of in­ter­est, rather than a for­mal RFP, could re­sult in un­der-the-ta­ble pay­ments that would en­rich a se­lect few per­sons and their fam­i­lies for gen­er­a­tions to come?

* Would the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion al­low for the sale or lease of the re­fin­ery based on the in­for­mal process of ex­pres­sions of in­ter­est, rather than the for­mal RFP process?

* Would in­for­mal ex­pres­sions of in­ter­est be im­mune from law­suits from un­suc­cess­ful bid­ders, which would slow down the se­lec­tion process for years?

I am firm in my view that a fair, le­gal, trans­par­ent, and COM­PET­I­TIVE process for se­lect­ing an op­er­a­tor for the re­fin­ery is ab­solute­ly nec­es­sary be­cause:

T&T needs the best com­pa­ny to win be­cause:

An as­set dis­pos­al process that is fair, le­gal, trans­par­ent and COM­PET­I­TIVE gives the coun­try a bet­ter chance of end­ing up with a pre­ferred bid­der who would work in the coun­try’s best in­ter­est.

In my view, the best in­ter­ests of T&T would in­clude the fol­low­ing:

A com­pa­ny that would be will­ing to pro­vide the funds for the re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of the re­fin­ery and for work­ing cap­i­tal needs of the re­fin­ery at start up. Ac­cord­ing to In­vesto­pe­dia, work­ing cap­i­tal is the op­er­a­tional liq­uid­i­ty and short-term fi­nan­cial health of a com­pa­ny that is cal­cu­lat­ed as cur­rent as­sets mi­nus cur­rent li­a­bil­i­ties.

Work­ing cap­i­tal “rep­re­sents the funds avail­able for day-to-day op­er­a­tions, such as pay­ing em­ploy­ees, sup­pli­er.”

A rough es­ti­mate, based on pub­lished es­ti­mates, is that the re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of the re­fin­ery would cost about US$1 bil­lion. The guid­ance on work­ing cap­i­tal is that it should be based on pro­ject­ed op­er­at­ing ex­pens­es, typ­i­cal­ly up to six months of op­er­at­ing ex­pens­es (rent, pay­roll, util­i­ties) as a cash buffer.

Based on the ex­pens­es of Petrotrin in the years 2015, 2016 and 2017, a back-of-the-en­ve­lope cal­cu­la­tion of the work­ing cap­i­tal re­quire­ments of the re­fin­ery would be US$200 mil­lion. That would be an es­ti­mat­ed to­tal cost of US$1.2 bil­lion.

It is fair­ly well es­tab­lished that the Gov­ern­ment of T&T has ex­treme­ly lim­it­ed fis­cal space, es­pe­cial­ly when it comes to spend­ing in for­eign ex­change. It would, there­fore, be ex­treme­ly risky for the Gov­ern­ment to un­der­take the cost of restart­ing and op­er­at­ing the re­fin­ery or even par­tic­i­pat­ing, to a sig­nif­i­cant ex­tent, in the re­fin­ery’s re­sump­tion of op­er­a­tions.

No guar­an­tee

Even a prop­er­ly struc­tured and im­ple­ment­ed RFP does not guar­an­tee that the best com­pa­ny will be cho­sen.

In my view, the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion de­signed and im­ple­ment­ed a near-per­fect RFP process in 2019, when it sought to en­gage a com­pa­ny to lease or ac­quire the re­fin­ery. That process re­sult­ed in Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gies and Tech­nolo­gies, a com­pa­ny formed by the Oil­fields Work­ers Trade Union (OW­TU), be­ing named as the pre­ferred bid­der, main­ly be­cause it com­mit­ted to an up­front pay­ment of US$700 mil­lion for the re­fin­ery and fu­el trad­ing com­pa­ny as­sets. Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gies was sm­ply un­able to raise the funds, even af­ter sev­er­al ex­ten­sions of time by the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion.

But there is cer­tain­ly a bet­ter chance of se­lect­ing the best op­er­a­tor from a com­pet­i­tive process than from a non-com­pet­i­tive one.