OWTU: New company taking helm in Guaracara Refinery push

Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Re­porter

The Oil­field Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU) is pur­su­ing the restart of the Guaracara re­fin­ery with a dif­fer­ent com­pa­ny than Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gies and Tech­nolo­gies Ltd (PET), which the union had used in its un­suc­cess­ful 2019 bid for the re­fin­ery.

OW­TU’s chief ed­u­ca­tion/re­search of­fi­cer, Ozzie War­wick, yes­ter­day made it clear that an­oth­er com­pa­ny—Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gies Ser­vices (PES)—is the ve­hi­cle for the union’s lat­est pro­pos­al to­wards the restart of the re­fin­ery. Both PES and PET are owned by OW­TU.

War­wick spoke as PES of­fi­cial­ly con­firmed sign­ing a strate­gic part­ner­ship agree­ment with Tec­n­i­mont Ser­vice SpA, a sub­sidiary of the Ital­ian en­gi­neer­ing group Maire.

This, af­ter Maire on Wednes­day an­nounced it had been award­ed a US$50 mil­lion re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion study con­tract to do a ma­jor as­sess­ment in­spec­tion of the re­fin­ery.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Roodal Mooni­lal said Gov­ern­ment is “cer­tain­ly not” pay­ing for the study, adding he was un­sure if Pa­tri­ot­ic was pay­ing for it or ex­ter­nal in­vestors.

Mooni­lal said, “We’re due to meet oth­er in­ter­est­ed par­ties on Fri­day (to­day). There are ten across the globe … they’re from Asia, Africa, Eu­rope, the US and the Caribbean.”

He didn’t re­ply on whether there are any is­sues with the PES mak­ing the OW­TU’s pro­pos­al for the re­fin­ery, af­ter the PET did so in 2019.

Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gies and Tech­nolo­gies Ltd (PET) has had fi­nan­cial is­sues. In 2025, the court ruled in favour of KCL Cap­i­tal Mar­ket Bro­kers Ltd, hold­ing the OW­TU and PET li­able for over US$4 mil­lion in un­paid loans un­der­tak­en in 2019/2020 to fi­nance OW­TU’s at­tempt to buy the re­fin­ery, post-clo­sure.

There is an­oth­er le­gal mat­ter re­gard­ing De Loitte. In Feb­ru­ary, OW­TU pres­i­dent An­cil Ro­get said the union was work­ing close­ly with cred­i­tors to set­tle the judg­ment and am­i­ca­bly re­solve al­most $40 mil­lion in debt ac­cu­mu­lat­ed dur­ing failed at­tempts to ob­tain the re­fin­ery.

Yes­ter­day, PES di­rec­tor War­wick didn’t fore­see any is­sues for the en­ti­ty in pur­suit of a re­fin­ery restart, since he said the 2025 court judg­ment is against PET.

“These are two sep­a­rate com­pa­nies. The OW­TU owns both com­pa­nies. Both start­ed at the same time—2018,” War­wick added.

Asked what PES has done since then, War­wick said, “Build­ing en­er­gy net­works, strength­en­ing tech­ni­cal ca­pac­i­ty, ex­plor­ing new tech­nolo­gies to fa­cil­i­tate just en­er­gy tran­si­tion.

“Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gies Ser­vices, in pur­suit of the restart of the re­fin­ery, is open and will­ing to part­ner with any com­pa­ny that is se­ri­ous and in­ter­est­ed in restart­ing the re­fin­ery.”

War­wick cit­ed PES’ state­ment on the Tec­n­i­mont part­ner­ship.

“This col­lab­o­ra­tion marks a sig­nif­i­cant mile­stone in our on­go­ing ef­forts to re­ha­bil­i­tate and restart the Guaracara Re­fin­ery as we ad­vance our pro­pos­al to the Gov­ern­ment,” he said.

“By lever­ag­ing the glob­al en­gi­neer­ing and tech­ni­cal ex­per­tise of Tec­n­i­mont, we’re strength­en­ing our op­er­a­tional ca­pac­i­ty to re­store this crit­i­cal na­tion­al as­set to func­tion­al­i­ty to the peo­ple’s ben­e­fit.

“The de­ci­sion to part­ner with a firm of Tec­n­i­mont’s in­ter­na­tion­al stand­ing un­der­scores our com­mit­ment to ex­e­cut­ing this project with the high­est stan­dards of in­dus­tri­al safe­ty, en­gi­neer­ing ex­cel­lence and en­vi­ron­men­tal stew­ard­ship.”

PES added, “While we recog­nise and wel­come the sig­nif­i­cant pub­lic in­ter­est sur­round­ing the restart of the re­fin­ery, we are cur­rent­ly bound by strict con­fi­den­tial­i­ty and non-dis­clo­sure agree­ments re­gard­ing the spe­cif­ic fi­nan­cial and tech­ni­cal terms of this part­ner­ship.”

The com­pa­ny said it looked for­ward to shar­ing fur­ther de­tails as the project com­mences and moves in­to its next phase.

“Through our ex­pe­ri­enced ne­go­ti­at­ing skills and tech­ni­cal com­pe­ten­cy of our team, backed by our ex­pe­ri­enced work­force, we were able to ne­go­ti­ate a com­pre­hen­sive agree­ment for the de­tailed en­gi­neer­ing in­spec­tion. This part­ner­ship and ap­proach will not cost the gov­ern­ment $1 dol­lar, and def­i­nite­ly no gov­ern­ment guar­an­tee is re­quired.”

For­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Stu­art Young said de­spite Mooni­lal and War­wick’s com­ments yes­ter­day on the Tec­n­i­mont study, “trou­bling ques­tions re­main.”

“Who con­tract­ed with the Ital­ian firm for US$50 mil­lion (TT$350m)? Who’s pay­ing that? Mooni­lal said it’s not the gov­ern­ment, but every­one knows that OW­TU and Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gies and Tech­nolo­gies Co Ltd have found them­selves in se­ri­ous fi­nan­cial trou­ble with judg­ment debts reg­is­tered against Pa­tri­ot­ic to the tune of tens of mil­lions of dol­lars.”

He added, “Now with their new com­pa­ny – Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gies Ser­vices - I hope those that are owed tens of mil­lions are ob­serv­ing and tak­ing good le­gal ad­vice.

“Al­so, on what ba­sis would OW­TU or any en­ti­ty as­so­ci­at­ed with OW­TU en­ter in­to a US$50 mil­lion con­tract for a study, as­sess­ment and plan to be done? Has the gov­ern­ment en­tered in­to an agree­ment with them? No in­di­vid­ual or en­ti­ty would com­mit it­self to spend TT$350 mil­lion for a study, as­sess­ment and plan un­less they had an ex­clu­sive agree­ment for the re­fin­ery.

“As usu­al, the UNC gov­ern­ment has failed to act trans­par­ent­ly or hon­est­ly. But this is what we’ve come to ex­pect from them. If they breach the laws, I’ll en­sure le­gal ac­tion is tak­en against them.”