The En­er­gy Cham­ber of Trinidad & To­ba­go is wel­com­ing the state's de­ci­sion to lease re­fin­ery as­sets to Oan­do Trad­ing.

In a me­dia state­ment, the Cham­ber said they have "long sup­port­ed the pri­va­ti­za­tion of the Guaracara/Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery to put the as­set to pro­duc­tive use."

The Cham­ber added that they were pleased to learn that an in­vestor had been iden­ti­fied to lease the re­fin­ery as­sets from Trinidad Pe­tro­le­um Hold­ings Ltd (TPHL) with the ob­jec­tive of restart­ing re­fin­ing op­er­a­tions.

It high­light­ed that the re­vival of the re­fin­ery would lead to the gen­er­a­tion of new jobs, the cre­ation of busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ties, and an in­crease in tax rev­enue for the gov­ern­ment. In ad­di­tion to this, it added that "for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment in these as­sets will con­tribute to greater for­eign cur­ren­cy cir­cu­la­tion with­in the lo­cal econ­o­my."

The Cham­ber said sig­nif­i­cant cap­i­tal in­vest­ment is re­quired to "bring the re­fin­ery’s as­sets back in­to pro­duc­tive and prof­itable op­er­a­tion," there­fore "this in­vest­ment must be care­ful­ly de­ployed and man­aged, as it in­volves sub­stan­tial risk."

Due to this rea­son, the En­er­gy Cham­ber re­it­er­at­ed its be­lief that "no ad­di­tion­al tax­pay­er funds from Trinidad & To­ba­go should be al­lo­cat­ed to this in­vest­ment; in­stead, the re­quired cap­i­tal should come from the pri­vate sec­tor." It fur­ther ex­plained that giv­en the scale of the in­vest­ment need­ed, "the ma­jor­i­ty of this cap­i­tal was al­ways ex­pect­ed to orig­i­nate from in­ter­na­tion­al sources, though the En­er­gy Cham­ber has strong­ly sup­port­ed and en­cour­aged lo­cal pri­vate sec­tor par­tic­i­pa­tion as well."

The En­er­gy Cham­ber in­di­cat­ed that it is pre­pared to col­lab­o­rate with Oan­do Trad­ing to en­sure the safe re­sump­tion of re­fin­ery op­er­a­tions, and is con­fi­dent that this marks the be­gin­ning of a long and mu­tu­al­ly ben­e­fi­cial re­la­tion­ship.