Energy Chamber says Venezuela could be one source for re-starting refinery

The En­er­gy Cham­ber of Trinidad and To­ba­go says a re­vi­talised Venezuela oil in­dus­try could po­ten­tial­ly be one source for pro­vid­ing crude oil if the oil re­fin­ery in south Trinidad is re-start­ed.

“If the re­fin­ery does restart, as every­one in the in­dus­try hopes, then the re­fin­ery op­er­a­tors will have to find new sources of crude to im­port. A re­vi­talised Venezuela oil in­dus­try could po­ten­tial­ly be one source,” the En­er­gy Cham­ber said.

It said that over the past few years there has been a great deal of dis­course in the coun­try about the op­por­tu­ni­ties to im­port nat­ur­al gas from Venezuela to Trinidad for pro­cess­ing in­to petro­chem­i­cal or liqui­fied nat­ur­al gas (LNG) and re-ex­port­ing the fi­nal prod­ucts to in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets.

It said that this con­tin­ues to be a ma­jor area of in­ter­est and es­pe­cial­ly with the Drag­on gas field.

“While the cur­rent fo­cus is on gas, there was a time in the past when Trinidad and To­ba­go im­port­ed sub­stan­tial vol­umes of crude oil from Venezuela pri­mar­i­ly as feed­stock for the now moth­balled Point-a-Pierre re­fin­ery.”

The En­er­gy Cham­ber said that in the year 2000, Trinidad and To­ba­go im­port­ed over 18 mil­lion bar­rels of crude from Venezuela, which at the time rep­re­sent­ed over half of the coun­try’s im­port­ed crude. It said that this is equiv­a­lent to just over 50,000 bar­rels per day rough­ly equal to the cur­rent do­mes­tic pro­duc­tion of the coun­try.

“To some, it might be sur­pris­ing that Trinidad and To­ba­go im­port­ed oil at all. How­ev­er, this was done main­ly to sup­ple­ment do­mes­tic pro­duc­tion for the re­fin­ery as lo­cal out­put fell,” the En­er­gy Cham­ber ex­plained. “An­nu­al­ly, the coun­try im­port­ed around 30 mil­lion bar­rels (over 80,000 bar­rels per day) of crude from sources around the world, in­clud­ing Venezuela, oth­er parts of Latin Amer­i­ca, Cana­da, Rus­sia, and Africa.”

The En­er­gy Cham­ber said that the crude oil that was im­port­ed from Venezuela did not all go to the re­fin­ery for pro­cess­ing and that there were some vol­umes from Venezuela that were im­port­ed, stored and then re-ex­port­ed.

“There was al­so Venezue­lan crude that was processed at Point-a-Pierre to cre­ate lube oils for ex­port,” it not­ed.

The En­er­gy Cham­ber not­ed that in the ear­ly 2000s PDVSA, the state oil com­pa­ny of Venezuela, were ac­tu­al­ly mem­bers of the En­er­gy Cham­ber, then called the South Trinidad Cham­ber, reg­u­lar­ly at­tend­ing and speak­ing at the Trinidad and To­ba­go En­er­gy Con­fer­ence.

“Over time, how­ev­er, this re­la­tion­ship slipped, as did the im­ports of crude from Venezuela,” the En­er­gy Cham­ber ex­plained. “The im­ports even­tu­al­ly stopped in 2009, af­ter which oth­er sources were sought. Dur­ing the peak years, Venezue­lan oil played a crit­i­cal role in sup­port­ing re­fin­ery op­er­a­tions, sup­ply­ing the vol­umes need­ed to sus­tain out­put.”

“The re­fin­ery has a ca­pac­i­ty of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 175,000 bar­rels of oil per day. Do­mes­tic pro­duc­tion from Trinidad and To­ba­go alone could not meet this de­mand; there­fore, im­ports were nec­es­sary to keep the re­fin­ery op­er­a­tional.”

“In 2018, when the re­fin­ery closed, do­mes­tic pro­duc­tion was 63,000 bar­rels per day. Pro­duc­tion con­tin­ues to slip, how­ev­er, and do­mes­tic pro­duc­tion now stands at ap­prox­i­mate­ly 53,000 bar­rels per day,” the En­er­gy Cham­ber said.

Fol­low­ing the Unit­ed States mil­i­tary in­va­sion of Venezuela ear­li­er this year, Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump has in­di­cat­ed that Wash­ing­ton will run the South Amer­i­can coun­try for the fore­see­able fu­ture.

Venezuela is sit­ting on a mas­sive 303 bil­lion bar­rels worth of crude, about a fifth of the world’s glob­al re­serves, ac­cord­ing to the US En­er­gy In­for­ma­tion Ad­min­is­tra­tion (EIA).

The Trinidad and To­ba­go gov­ern­ment has al­ready in­di­cat­ed that it is ex­plor­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners be­ing in­volved in the re-start of the state-owned oil re­fin­ery that was shut down in 2018, when the for­mer gov­ern­ment said the cost of up­grad­ing the re­fin­ery would have loaded the com­pa­ny with an un­sus­tain­able debt bur­den es­ti­mat­ed at TT$12 bil­lion (One TT dol­lar=US$0.16 cents).

En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal said the Kam­la-Per­sad Bisses­sar ad­min­is­tra­tion has giv­en se­ri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion to the “In­ter­im Re­port of the Re­fin­ery Restart Com­mit­tee” led by for­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine, last month.

Last De­cem­ber, Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar said her gov­ern­ment would restart the state-owned Petrotrin oil re­fin­ery and that the find­ings of the com­mit­tee “are clear, restart­ing the Guaracara Re­fin­ery is tech­ni­cal­ly, com­mer­cial­ly and fi­nan­cial­ly vi­able even af­ter sev­en years of clo­sure and ne­glect.” —PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad (CMC)