Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter 

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

More than six years af­ter the clo­sure of the Guaracara Re­fin­ery, res­i­dents and busi­ness own­ers in fence­line com­mu­ni­ties are fi­nal­ly see­ing a glim­mer of hope for, what they say, would be a bet­ter qual­i­ty of life.

This re­newed op­ti­mism came from the an­nounce­ment by act­ing Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young on Feb­ru­ary 27 that Oan­do PLC has been cho­sen as the pre­ferred bid­der for the lease of the re­fin­ery. 

More than 5,000 work­ers lost their jobs and busi­ness­es were ei­ther crip­pled or down­sized when Petrotrin closed its doors on No­vem­ber 30, 2018.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the Clax­ton Bay and Mara­bel­la com­mu­ni­ties yes­ter­day, sev­er­al res­i­dents and busi­ness own­ers were hap­py about the an­nounce­ment. But some were al­so scep­ti­cal and pre­ferred to wait un­til the deal was signed off on be­fore mak­ing any com­ments. 

Res­i­dent Ju­ma Alexan­der, who op­er­ates a bar­ber shop in Mara­bel­la said Gov­ern­ment made an “er­ror” by clos­ing down Petrotrin be­cause many work­ers, fam­i­lies and busi­ness­es were af­fect­ed.

Alexan­der, who pre­ferred to get more de­tails on Oan­do’s bid be­fore com­ment­ing fur­ther, said “We can­not an­swer that now. Un­til the new bid­der comes in­to per­spec­tive, then we will see what they do­ing and what they have for the com­mu­ni­ty.”

Re­call­ing that his fa­ther had worked part-time as a pip­efit­ter with Petrotrin, res­i­dent Shawn­dell Cayenne, 25, said his fa­ther had to seek oth­er em­ploy­ment.  

He was thank­ful that at­tempts were be­ing made to have the re­fin­ery back up and run­ning.

“Over­all, I pleased it open­ing back up. I used to work in the in­dus­try so that open­ing back is a ma­jor plus for me,” said Cayenne.

Alpheus Lewis, a res­i­dent of St Mar­garet’s Vil­lage, Clax­ton Bay, said he sup­ports any at­tempt to restart the re­fin­ery be­cause its clo­sure had neg­a­tive­ly af­fect­ed com­mu­ni­ties and res­i­dents.

“If some­body from out­side, Nige­ria, com­ing to run the com­pa­ny, I ap­pre­ci­ate that very much. At my age, 76, some of my grand­kids can come back on the mar­ket and get jobs.”

An­oth­er res­i­dent Trevor Richards, 60, be­lieves that the re­fin­ery will gen­er­ate more jobs, which would curb crime in the com­mu­ni­ties.

“How long this thing (crime) hap­pen­ing I be­lieve is through un­em­ploy­ment and now if the re­fin­ery could come and open back up, every­body will be able to get some­thing. The youths and them will be able to put them­self in a bet­ter po­si­tion,” said Richards.

How­ev­er, Gail Charles, al­so from St Mar­garet’s Vil­lage, was not pleased with the re­fin­ery be­ing run by for­eign­ers. She felt that the re­fin­ery should re­main in lo­cal hands.

Lo­cal com­pa­ny Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gies and Tech­nolo­gies Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed had bid for the re­fin­ery and in Ju­ly 2020 was told that it was suc­cess­ful. How­ev­er, the com­pa­ny owned by the Oil­field Work­ers’ Trade Union, which rep­re­sent­ed Petrotrin work­ers, was lat­er told it had to prove that it had suf­fi­cient mon­ey to close the deal. On­ly last year En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young claimed that Pa­tri­ot­ic sub­mit­ted a fake and fraud­u­lent doc­u­ment. A claim, the OW­TU de­nied.

Mean­while, Skafte Awardy, own­er of Awardy’s Hard­ware and Gen­er­al Sup­plies Ltd, ad­mit­ted that he felt ex­cit­ed by the an­nounce­ment be­cause of what he said would be the sig­nif­i­cant ben­e­fits the re­fin­ery would bring to res­i­dents and busi­ness­es.

“It will be a pos­i­tive light for the Mara­bel­la area in terms of busi­ness, not on­ly for the hard­ware in­dus­try, those com­pa­nies that sup­ply the re­fin­ery but al­so the in­di­rect busi­ness such as the food, the en­ter­tain­ment in­dus­try sur­round­ing the re­fin­ery will be boost back again.”

Young, who is al­so the Min­is­ter of En­er­gy said the de­ci­sion to se­lect Oan­do was large­ly based on Oan­do’s strong fi­nan­cial track record, par­tic­u­lar­ly its $1.5 bil­lion ac­qui­si­tion of Cono­coPhillips’ as­sets in Nige­ria.