Expert hopes for jobs and forex boost from refinery reopening

RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­[email protected]

For­mer Petrotrin re­fin­ery ex­pert Gow­tam Ma­haraj says he hopes at least one train at the shut­tered Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery can be restart­ed with­in a year, cre­at­ing more jobs and bol­ster­ing T&T’s for­eign ex­change re­serves.

Ma­haraj, who has worked on all 26 plants for al­most three decades, spoke to Guardian Me­dia ex­clu­sive­ly as the Gov­ern­ment as­sess­es the re­open­ing of the re­fin­ery which was shut down by the Kei­th-Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion in 2018, leav­ing more than 5,000 work­ers on the bread­line.

Ma­haraj, who toured the re­fin­ery with­in the past year, said re­open­ing the fa­cil­i­ty will boost eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty through­out south Trinidad. He ex­pressed hope that with­in one year at least one train com­pris­ing of the con­tin­u­ous cat­a­lyst re­gen­er­a­tion (CCR) plant or the iso­meri­sa­tion plants would come on­stream to pro­duce gaso­line.

His com­ments come as Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar an­nounced the for­ma­tion of a tech­ni­cal com­mit­tee to ex­plore the re­open­ing of the re­fin­ery.

While the prospect of restart­ing is vi­able, Ma­haraj stressed that safe­ty was of para­mount im­por­tance, so com­pre­hen­sive in­tegri­ty test­ing must come first.

“One can­not give any em­pir­i­cal in­for­ma­tion in terms of what can be start­ed at this par­tic­u­lar time, be­cause an in­tegri­ty as­sess­ment is what will de­ter­mine that,” he said.

These as­sess­ments will in­volve a bat­tery of non-de­struc­tive test­ing meth­ods, in­clud­ing X-ray, ul­tra­son­ic, and phased-ar­ray analy­sis—to ver­i­fy the safe­ty and re­li­a­bil­i­ty of ves­sels, com­pres­sors, columns, and pip­ing that have en­dured high tem­per­a­tures and pres­sures. Ma­haraj not­ed that some of the re­fin­ery’s in­fra­struc­ture, par­tic­u­lar­ly units like the CCR and iso­meri­sa­tion plants, are rel­a­tive­ly new and well-po­si­tioned to lead the phased restart.

“For­tu­nate­ly, some of these fair­ly new plants may be the very ones that are need­ed to start up to sup­ply lo­cal gaso­line de­mand. That’s a bit of good news,” he ex­plained.

He said the prospect of restart­ing even part of the re­fin­ery is sig­nif­i­cant. Ma­haraj es­ti­mates lo­cal de­mand for diesel and gaso­line to be over 20,000 bar­rels per day, a sup­ply that T&T cur­rent­ly im­ports, de­plet­ing for­eign ex­change.

He said a func­tion­ing Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery would al­so en­able T&T to re­claim its his­tor­i­cal­ly dom­i­nant po­si­tion as a sup­pli­er to Caribbean na­tions.

“We held the re­gion­al mar­ket, and no­body could have tak­en that from us,” Ma­haraj em­pha­sised. “We are lo­gis­ti­cal­ly in the best place ... and we blend to meet each is­land’s ex­act spec­i­fi­ca­tion. They ap­pre­ci­at­ed that—and stayed with us.”

He point­ed to re­cent glob­al dy­nam­ics, such as re­duced heavy oil out­put from Venezuela, Cana­da and Mex­i­co due to sanc­tions and tar­iffs, as a win­dow of op­por­tu­ni­ty for T&T’s fu­el oils to fetch a near-pre­mi­um price.

“Mar­gins for that are fair­ly good. So I sup­port any de­ci­sion to restart the Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery. We have dom­i­nat­ed the re­gion­al mar­ket, and we have the po­ten­tial to con­tin­ue to do so,” he added.

De­spite this op­ti­mism, Ma­haraj un­der­scored the chal­lenges ahead. He said com­po­nents may need to be re­placed en­tire­ly de­pend­ing on in­tegri­ty test re­sults, and many parts will have to be sourced in­ter­na­tion­al­ly from orig­i­nal equip­ment man­u­fac­tur­ers. That process, along with retro­fitting, pro­cure­ment, and re-cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, could de­lay full-scale op­er­a­tions, he ex­plained.

Still, Ma­haraj in­sist­ed the lo­cal tal­ent pool re­mains ro­bust and ex­pe­ri­enced enough to man­age such a project.

“We have processed crudes from as far as Rus­sia and Brazil. Our teams know how to adapt,” he ex­plained.

He ex­pressed hope that the new com­mit­tee will en­gage in a com­pre­hen­sive in­tegri­ty as­sess­ment of all crit­i­cal sys­tems, pro­vide clear start­up time­lines based on test re­sults, es­tab­lish a crude sourc­ing strat­e­gy, in­clud­ing blends of lo­cal and im­port­ed crudes as well as mar­ket­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion plans for re­gion­al fu­el sales.

Ma­haraj said hun­dreds of mil­lions of US dol­lars will be need­ed to ful­ly restart the re­fin­ery and the com­mit­tee must al­so pro­vide a cap­i­tal bud­get and pro­cure­ment sched­ule for parts and equip­ment.

He al­so flagged the pres­ence of a brand-new ul­tra-low sul­fur diesel (ULSD) plant at the site as a key as­set. Though un­used to date, he said this plant could be retro­fit­ted and brought on­line with the right in­vest­ment—of­fer­ing a high-de­mand diesel prod­uct on the glob­al mar­ket.

“There’s good news in there. It’s not all a junk­yard,” Ma­haraj said.

“This is an eco­nom­ic op­por­tu­ni­ty, and it’s one we’re equipped to take on now that we have a Prime Min­is­ter and En­er­gy Min­is­ter who have the po­lit­i­cal will to re­vi­talise our re­fin­ery op­er­a­tions.”

He said en­er­gy self-suf­fi­cien­cy was need­ed and the geopo­lit­i­cal ten­sions in the Mid­dle East pre­sent­ed op­por­tu­ni­ties for re­fin­ing crude.