Moonilal: All options on the table for refinery restart

RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­[email protected]

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal says the gov­ern­ment is con­sid­er­ing every pos­si­ble com­mer­cial arrange­ment to restart the Pointe-à-Pierre re­fin­ery, in­clud­ing part­ner­ships with for­eign gov­ern­ments, in­ter­na­tion­al in­vestors and com­pa­nies that pre­vi­ous­ly bid for the as­set.

Speak­ing at his toy dis­tri­b­u­tion event in Debe on Sat­ur­day, he said the Cab­i­net is now re­view­ing the Re­fin­ery Restart Com­mit­tee’s In­ter­im Re­port, which was de­liv­ered to Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar on Thurs­day. He warned that any de­lay in ad­vanc­ing the project could dri­ve up costs and un­der­mine the restart ef­fort.

“Fur­ther de­lays would make the project it­self un­eco­nom­i­cal and there's a re­al risk that the cost can es­ca­late rapid­ly if we de­lay fur­ther,” he said.

Dr Mooni­lal said the re­port con­firms the re­fin­ery is tech­ni­cal­ly and com­mer­cial­ly vi­able, de­spite be­ing closed for sev­en years. He said it will need sig­nif­i­cant cap­i­tal in­vest­ment and could re­turn to lim­it­ed op­er­a­tion with­in 18 months, with full ca­pac­i­ty reached with­in 38 to 39 months.

“The com­mit­tee’s roadmap sug­gests the re­fin­ery could be­gin lim­it­ed pro­duc­tion with­in 18 months once cap­i­tal is se­cured,” he said. “We can be­gin to have some­thing akin to a turn­around… to re­turn the re­fin­ery to op­er­a­tional mode.”

He said the gov­ern­ment is as­sess­ing do­mes­tic and in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners.

“We are now look­ing at the re­port in its en­tire­ty… to iden­ti­fy en­ti­ties, groups, pos­si­bly gov­ern­ments as well, that may be in­ter­est­ed in part­ner­ing with us.”

He added that com­pa­nies which pre­vi­ous­ly sub­mit­ted bids may re­turn.

“Those per­sons and en­ti­ties who have shown in­ter­est be­fore, all op­tions are on the ta­ble.”

Dr Mooni­lal al­so ref­er­enced con­cerns raised about the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion’s se­lec­tion process.

“I… dis­cov­ered… a very mind-bog­gling let­ter from the OPR… which raised se­ri­ous con­cerns about that process.”

He con­firmed that the Oil­field Work­ers Trade Union par­tic­i­pat­ed in the com­mit­tee’s work and signed the re­port. He said the restart could ini­tial­ly cre­ate 2,000 to 3,000 jobs, ris­ing to 4,000 or 5,000 at full op­er­a­tion, with an es­ti­mat­ed 95 per cent of the work­force be­ing lo­cal.

Dr Mooni­lal said the state can­not fi­nance the multi­bil­lion-dol­lar restart on its own.

“We in­her­it­ed an econ­o­my where the trea­sury… had a mop, a broom and Clorox be­cause it was cleaned out.”

He said ex­ter­nal sup­port will be re­quired and the min­istry will con­tin­ue re­view­ing the tech­ni­cal and fi­nan­cial el­e­ments of the re­port be­fore en­ter­ing any ne­go­ti­a­tions.

The Prime Min­is­ter’s of­fice is­sued a state­ment on Fri­day con­firm­ing she re­ceived the com­mit­tee’s In­ter­im Re­port, chaired by for­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine. The com­mit­tee met 11 times, re­viewed his­tor­i­cal op­er­a­tional and fi­nan­cial da­ta, ex­am­ined the re­fin­ery’s preser­va­tion sta­tus, re­ceived ex­pert pre­sen­ta­tions and con­duct­ed site vis­its to Pointe-à-Pierre.

The re­port out­lines cap­i­tal needs, tech­ni­cal-readi­ness as­sess­ments, com­mer­cial fea­si­bil­i­ty and the hu­man-re­source re­quire­ments for a restart. It con­cludes that the re­fin­ery re­mains tech­ni­cal­ly, com­mer­cial­ly and fi­nan­cial­ly vi­able based on cur­rent re­gion­al and ex­tra-re­gion­al de­mand for re­fined prod­ucts.

It warns that degra­da­tion of units and sup­port­ing util­i­ties con­tin­ues and that time is crit­i­cal to pre­vent a restart from be­com­ing un-eco­nom­ic. New­er plants in­stalled un­der the Gaso­line Op­ti­mi­sa­tion Pro­gramme are re­port­ed to be in rel­a­tive­ly good con­di­tion.

The in­ter­im find­ings rec­om­mend a four-phase restart strat­e­gy and em­pha­sise the im­por­tance of re­me­di­al work on the Ul­tra Low Sul­phur Diesel plant, which has nev­er been com­mis­sioned but is con­sid­ered crit­i­cal to re­fin­ery eco­nom­ics.

The Prime Min­is­ter said health and safe­ty re­quire­ments re­main para­mount. She has di­rect­ed the En­er­gy Min­istry to re­view the find­ings and pro­pose pos­si­ble restart mod­els. A fi­nal fea­si­bil­i­ty and restart rec­om­men­da­tion is ex­pect­ed ear­ly in 2026.

Since the re­fin­ery’s clo­sure, 77 bid­ders have ex­pressed in­ter­est in tak­ing over or leas­ing the fa­cil­i­ty. In the 2024/2025 cy­cle, short­list­ed groups in­clud­ed CRO Con­sor­tium, IN­CA En­er­gy LLC and Niger­ian firm Oan­do PLC.