En­er­gy Min­is­ter and act­ing Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young says it is con­cern­ing that a for­mer prime min­is­ter as­pir­ing to lead T&T again “would con­tin­u­al­ly at­tempt to mis­lead the pop­u­la­tion” (sic) and in­di­cate to po­ten­tial in­vestors that she and her par­ty would not ho­n­our le­gal agree­ments that may be en­tered in­to for the ben­e­fit of cit­i­zens.

Young post­ed the com­ment on Face­book af­ter Per­sad-Biss­esar spoke on Thurs­day fol­low­ing his an­nounce­ment that Oan­do PLC was the pre­ferred bid­der for the Petrotrin re­fin­ery. Per­sad-Bisss­sar sub­se­quent­ly vowed the UNC, if it be­comes the next gov­ern­ment, won’t ho­n­our any agree­ment the PNM Gov­ern­ment en­ters in­to re­gard­ing the re­fin­ery. She promised the UNC would in­ves­ti­gate every­one who par­tic­i­pates in “this theft of the re­fin­ery as­sets.”

But Young claimed, “The be­hav­iour of the UNC leader is most un­for­tu­nate and un­be­com­ing.”

In the post, he said he was com­pelled to re­spond to “an­oth­er un­for­tu­nate at­tempt” by Per­sad-Bisses­sar, “ to mis­lead the pop­u­la­tion with re­spect to the facts sur­round­ing the fi­nan­cial stand­ing of Petrotrin in 2018.”

The Min­is­ter cit­ed Thurs­day’s sto­ry quot­ing her say­ing Petrotrin made a prof­it of $1.67 bil­lion in 2018, its last year of op­er­a­tion. He at­tached the rel­e­vant pages of the con­sol­i­dat­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments for Petrotrin for 2018, which he said “clear­ly showed a $16.487 bil­lion loss for 2018.”

“Make your choic­es very care­ful­ly,” Young added.

Petrotrin's au­dit­ed fi­nan­cials for 2018 can be found on the Trinidad Pe­tro­le­um Hold­ings Ltd web­site. The in­de­pen­dent au­dit of Petrotrin was con­duct­ed by the firm of char­tered ac­coun­tants, KP­MG, and the en­gage­ment part­ner was Nigel Pan­choo.

The au­dit in­di­cates that Petrotrin in 2018 gen­er­at­ed rev­enue of $24.54 bil­lion, but record­ed cost of sales of $39.10 bil­lion, re­sult­ing in an op­er­at­ing loss of $14.56 bil­lion.

The main el­e­ments of Petrotrin's cost of sales were pur­chas­es of $16.71 bil­lion and the im­pair­ment of prop­er­ty, plant and equip­ment amount­ing to $15.45 bil­lion.

Mean­while, chief ed­u­ca­tion and re­search of­fi­cer of the Oil­field Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU), Ozzi War­wick said, “We will be mak­ing an of­fi­cial state­ment af­ter Car­ni­val. How­ev­er, we do find it sus­pi­cious that they named the pre­ferred bid­der just be­fore the elec­tions and when their Drag­on deal is about to col­lapse.”

Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gies Ltd, which bid mul­ti­ple times for the re­fin­ery, was reg­is­tered by the OW­TU led by An­cel Ro­get.

Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gies was said to be the pre­ferred bid­der for the re­fin­ery just be­fore the 2020 gen­er­al elec­tion.