Patriotic backs US$50m refinery study

Ke­jan Haynes

Lead Ed­i­tor- News­gath­er­ing

ke­[email protected]

An Ital­ian en­gi­neer­ing group says it has se­cured a US$50 mil­lion con­tract to con­duct a re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion study on Petrotrin’s re­fin­ery in Pointe-à-Pierre. How­ev­er, Gov­ern­ment is dis­tanc­ing it­self from the arrange­ment.

In a state­ment on its web­site, MAIRE an­nounced that its sub­sidiary, Tec­n­i­mont Ser­vices, had been award­ed the con­tract for an as­sess­ment of the re­fin­ery, de­scrib­ing it as a ma­jor project to as­sess and pre­pare the fa­cil­i­ty for po­ten­tial restart. The com­pa­ny said the project fur­ther strength­ens its ge­o­graph­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion by ex­pand­ing its pres­ence in Cen­tral Amer­i­ca.

The com­pa­ny said the work will in­clude “a com­pre­hen­sive tech­ni­cal and in­tegri­ty as­sess­ment” of the re­fin­ery’s units and equip­ment, along with de­vel­op­ment of a two-phase re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion study.

It added that the ex­er­cise will eval­u­ate en­er­gy ef­fi­cien­cy, en­vi­ron­men­tal per­for­mance and en­gi­neer­ing re­quire­ments, in­clud­ing up­grad­ed wa­ter in­take and cool­ing sys­tems.

MAIRE CEO Alessan­dro Berni­ni said, “The up­grad­ing of the Guaracara Re­fin­ery Com­plex is ex­pect­ed to gen­er­ate tan­gi­ble ben­e­fits for the lo­cal econ­o­my, con­tribut­ing to val­ue cre­ation, in­dus­tri­al de­vel­op­ment and skill en­hance­ment.”

How­ev­er, con­tact­ed yes­ter­day af­ter the Ital­ian firm post­ed the state­ment on its web­site, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal made it clear that the Gov­ern­ment is not in­volved in the deal.

“They are one of many glob­al oil and gas cor­po­ra­tions and in­vest­ment en­ti­ties in­ter­est­ed in our re­fin­ery. They are in­volved with Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gies in their on­go­ing in­ter­est in the re­fin­ery op­er­a­tions,” Mooni­lal said.

“The doors are open to all in­vestors and en­er­gy com­pa­nies. There is no se­lect­ed en­ti­ty at this mo­ment.”

Al­so con­tact­ed via phone, Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gies di­rec­tor Ozzie War­wick con­firmed the arrange­ment with the Ital­ian com­pa­ny, but of­fered lim­it­ed de­tails.

“Yes, Tec­n­i­mont has part­nered with Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gies to con­duct a de­tailed en­gi­neer­ing in­spec­tion of the Guaracara re­fin­ery as part of Pa­tri­ot­ic’s pro­pos­al to the Gov­ern­ment for the restart of the re­fin­ery. This arrange­ment is be­tween Tec­n­i­mont and Pa­tri­ot­ic and has no in­volve­ment from the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go apart from cour­te­sies ex­tend­ed,” he said.

When asked how the study was be­ing fi­nanced, War­wick said, “It’s paid for by in­vest­ment part­ners who will be dis­closed at the ap­pro­pri­ate time.”

He did not re­spond to fur­ther ques­tions, in­clud­ing why such a study is be­ing un­der­tak­en be­fore any for­mal award of a re­fin­ery con­tract.

Yes­ter­day, chair­man of the Re­fin­ery Restart Com­mit­tee, Kevin Ram­nar­ine, said the lat­est de­vel­op­ment was sep­a­rate from the com­mit­tee’s work.

“I have no in­for­ma­tion on the Tech­n­i­mont sto­ry that has been pub­lished on sev­er­al in­ter­na­tion­al web­sites. The com­mit­tee I chaired sub­mit­ted its re­port to the Min­istry of En­er­gy in De­cem­ber 2025. It large­ly looked at the restart from an as­set in­tegri­ty, process en­gi­neer­ing and eco­nom­ic point of view. I ex­pect that these find­ings will in­form Gov­ern­ment’s dis­cus­sions with po­ten­tial in­vestors,” he said.

But Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment MP Stu­art Young ques­tioned the le­git­i­ma­cy and trans­paren­cy of the re­port­ed deal.

“First, who is it that award­ed this con­tract to this Ital­ian firm? Who signed that con­tract? Sec­ond­ly, who is pay­ing 50 mil­lion US dol­lars for this as­sess­ment and plan to be done? Is it us, the tax­pay­ers? And the third ques­tion for Kam­la Per­sad and Mooni­lal is this, every time you all have trav­elled to the Unit­ed States, to In­dia and to Guyana, the two of you have told Trinidad and To­ba­go that you have end­less com­pa­nies lined up com­ing to restart the re­fin­ery at Pointe-a-Pierre. What ex­act­ly is the truth? What ex­act­ly are the an­swers to these ques­tions? Be­cause we, Trinidad and To­ba­go, de­serve the an­swer.”

In 2024, Young, then the En­er­gy min­is­ter, ac­cused Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gies and Tech­nolo­gies Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed of sub­mit­ting a fraud­u­lent doc­u­ment claim­ing it had se­cured US$1.5 bil­lion to fi­nance its bid for the re­fin­ery, in­sist­ing the com­pa­ny did not have the re­quired fund­ing de­spite be­ing giv­en ad­di­tion­al time.

Pa­tri­ot­ic re­ject­ed the claims, de­scrib­ing them as “mis­lead­ing and mis­chie­vous” and main­tain­ing that its pre­ferred fi­nancier had been vet­ted by the eval­u­a­tion com­mit­tee and ac­cept­ed by Sco­tia­bank In­ter­na­tion­al, with no con­cerns raised dur­ing the process.

In Ju­ly 2025, the Oil­field Work­ers’ Trade Union faced a ma­jor le­gal set­back tied to its ear­li­er bid to ac­quire the Pointe-à-Pierre re­fin­ery.

The High Court ruled in favour of KCL Cap­i­tal Mar­ket Bro­kers Lim­it­ed, hold­ing the union and its af­fil­i­at­ed com­pa­ny, Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gies and Tech­nolo­gies Lim­it­ed, li­able for more than US$4 mil­lion in un­paid loans.

The loans were tak­en be­tween 2019 and 2020 to fi­nance the union’s at­tempt to pur­chase the re­fin­ery fol­low­ing the clo­sure of Petrotrin in 2018.

Guaracara re­fin­ery restart time­line over past year 

Feb­ru­ary 2025: Gov­ern­ment re-in­vites bids

Then prime min­is­ter, Dr Kei­th Row­ley, said the gov­ern­ment ex­pect­ed to com­plete the bid­ding process for the moth­balled Guaracara re­fin­ery by the end of Feb­ru­ary, af­ter reinvit­ing ex­pres­sions of in­ter­est fol­low­ing un­sat­is­fac­to­ry ini­tial bids.

June 2025: Plans to ex­plore re­fin­ery restart 

The gov­ern­ment dis­cussed form­ing a com­mit­tee to ex­am­ine re­open­ing the re­fin­ery, in­clud­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tives from labour and gov­ern­ment, to de­vel­op a tech­ni­cal, fi­nan­cial, and com­mer­cial strat­e­gy. Pub­lic re­port­ing con­firms dis­cus­sions, but an ex­act date is not doc­u­ment­ed.

Ju­ly 10-11, 2025: Re­fin­ery Restart Com­mit­tee for­mal­ly ap­point­ed

A 12-mem­ber Re­fin­ery Restart Com­mit­tee, chaired by for­mer En­er­gy Min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine, was of­fi­cial­ly ap­point­ed. The com­mit­tee was tasked with as­sess­ing the fea­si­bil­i­ty of restart­ing the re­fin­ery and sub­mit­ting its re­port to Cab­i­net with­in four months.

Sep­tem­ber 2025: Com­mit­tee progress

The com­mit­tee con­duct­ed de­tailed as­sess­ments, in­clud­ing re­view­ing moth­balling records, re­fin­ery in­fra­struc­ture, op­er­a­tional re­quire­ments, and po­ten­tial com­mer­cial part­ners. No pub­lic state­ment con­firms ex­act­ly Sep­tem­ber 10, but work was on­go­ing at this time.

Oc­to­ber 16, 2025: Five-phase re­vival plan an­nounced

Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of En­er­gy Ernesto Ke­sar said the re­fin­ery could be restart­ed, out­lin­ing a five-phase plan cov­er­ing equip­ment re­fur­bish­ment, work­force prepa­ra­tion, phased pro­duc­tion, and in­vestor en­gage­ment.

Oc­to­ber 21, 2025: Pre­lim­i­nary re­port re­ceived

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal said he had re­ceived a pre­lim­i­nary re­port from the com­mit­tee and promised “ex­cit­ing news” soon. The re­port was be­ing re­viewed for tech­ni­cal, com­mer­cial, and fi­nan­cial fea­si­bil­i­ty.

No­vem­ber 26, 2025: Com­pre­hen­sive re­port ex­pect­ed

Dr Mooni­lal said a com­pre­hen­sive restart re­port was ex­pect­ed short­ly, cov­er­ing tech­ni­cal, fi­nan­cial, and com­mer­cial fea­si­bil­i­ty to guide Cab­i­net de­ci­sions.

De­cem­ber 7, 2025: Gov­ern­ment con­sid­er­ing all op­tions

Dr Mooni­lal said the Gov­ern­ment was eval­u­at­ing all com­mer­cial arrange­ments, in­clud­ing po­ten­tial part­ner­ships with in­ter­na­tion­al in­vestors, and cau­tioned that de­lays could in­crease restart costs.

De­cem­ber 10, 2025: In­ter­im re­port con­firms vi­a­bil­i­ty

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­ceived the com­mit­tee’s in­ter­im re­port, which con­clud­ed the re­fin­ery is tech­ni­cal­ly, com­mer­cial­ly and fi­nan­cial­ly vi­able, though it not­ed as­set de­te­ri­o­ra­tion since clo­sure. The re­port rec­om­mend­ed a phased restart to max­imise eco­nom­ic ben­e­fit.

Late Jan­u­ary/Ear­ly Feb­ru­ary 2026: Talks with In­di­an Oil and in­ter­na­tion­al in­vestors

Dr Mooni­lal con­firmed on­go­ing dis­cus­sions with In­di­an Oil Cor­po­ra­tion and oth­er in­ter­na­tion­al and re­gion­al com­pa­nies to se­cure in­vest­ment and tech­ni­cal sup­port for the re­fin­ery restart.

March 2026: Phased restart plan­ning

Dr Mooni­lal said talks with ma­jor in­ter­na­tion­al and re­gion­al en­er­gy com­pa­nies, in­clud­ing US en­er­gy gi­ant Chevron Cor­po­ra­tion, were ac­tive­ly ad­vanc­ing, and in­di­cat­ed a phased restart lat­er in 2026, with some units ex­pect­ed to come on stream by year-end. 

March 2026: US$50m re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion study con­tract award­ed

Ital­ian firm Tec­n­i­mont (In­te­grat­ed E&C So­lu­tions busi­ness unit), through its sub­sidiary Tec­n­i­mont Ser­vices, an­nounced that it had been award­ed a re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion study con­tract worth US$50 mil­lion for the up­grad­ing of the Guaracara Re­fin­ery Com­plex, lo­cat­ed in Point-a-Pierre, Trinidad and To­ba­go.