Refinery restart on agenda as Moonilal heads to Guyana

Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Roodal Mooni­lal will con­tin­ue pitch­ing the restart of the Petrotrin re­fin­ery at the Guyana En­er­gy Con­fer­ence, which be­gins to­mor­row, and has as­sured that the Oil­field Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU) re­mains en­gaged with the Gov­ern­ment on all re­fin­ery-re­lat­ed mat­ters.

Mooni­lal con­firmed this to the T&T Guardian ahead of his trip to Guyana, where he will par­tic­i­pate in the week-long con­fer­ence. A five-mem­ber del­e­ga­tion will ac­com­pa­ny him.

Speak­ing ahead of yes­ter­day’s Ma­ha Shiv­ara­tri ob­ser­vances, Mooni­lal ad­dressed queries about his con­fer­ence agen­da, the re­fin­ery restart and the OW­TU’s in­volve­ment.

“We’re ex­treme­ly ex­cit­ed to par­tic­i­pate in the Guyana meet­ings. We’ve been in touch with the au­thor­i­ties there, in­clud­ing their en­er­gy lead­er­ship and the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent,” he said.

“We ex­pect to raise sev­er­al mat­ters of mu­tu­al con­cern, in­clud­ing de­vel­op­ment of T&T’s en­er­gy sec­tor and Guyana’s en­er­gy sec­tor, and the ex­tent to which we can sup­port Guyana’s down­stream ini­tia­tives and oth­er re­lat­ed mat­ters con­cern­ing tech­ni­cal and strate­gic sup­port for their new projects.”

“Yes, T&T’s re­fin­ery will be on the agen­da. It’s a pri­or­i­ty for Mrs Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and our ad­min­is­tra­tion. We in­tend rais­ing that mat­ter with the au­thor­i­ties in Guyana and with the ma­jor oil and gas com­pa­nies at­tend­ing this con­fer­ence. We ex­pect meet­ings with the high­est lead­er­ship of Exxon­Mo­bil, Chevron, To­tal­En­er­gies and Guyana’s Nat­ur­al Re­sources Min­istry.”

Re­gard­ing progress on the re­fin­ery, Mooni­lal said the min­istry is com­pil­ing doc­u­ments to send to In­di­an Oil Cor­po­ra­tion, which has ex­pressed strong in­ter­est in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“We made a com­mit­ment to share im­por­tant in­for­ma­tion and we ex­pect that arrange­ment with In­di­an Oil will con­tin­ue,” he said.

On re­port­ed in­ter­est by Re­liance In­dus­tries, one of Asia’s largest re­fin­ers, Mooni­lal not­ed re­cent re­ports of the com­pa­ny’s sig­nif­i­cant in­volve­ment in Venezue­lan oil. With its in­ten­tion to op­er­ate in the re­gion and T&T’s goal of be­com­ing the Caribbean’s en­er­gy hub, he said, “I’m sure Re­liance will have a deep­en­ing in­ter­est in be­ing here, in in­vest­ments and in us­ing T&T as a re­gion­al hub for wider hemi­spher­ic par­tic­i­pa­tion in the en­er­gy land­scape.”

Ad­dress­ing ques­tions about whether the OW­TU—cur­rent­ly car­ry­ing debts—is in a suit­able fi­nan­cial po­si­tion to in­vest in the re­fin­ery, Mooni­lal said, “We are in­volved with the OW­TU; they are, of course, a part­ner in our ad­min­is­tra­tion and have worked with us tire­less­ly for our rev­o­lu­tion­ary change in April 2025.

“We are in touch with the lead­er­ship and, yes, they are work­ing with us on all mat­ters re­lat­ed to the re­fin­ery and oth­er en­er­gy-sec­tor projects. We in­tend to con­tin­ue work­ing with the labour move­ment to en­sure there is op­ti­mal par­tic­i­pa­tion in change and in restart­ing the re­fin­ery,” he added.

OW­TU pres­i­dent An­cil Ro­get did not re­spond to queries yes­ter­day re­gard­ing the union’s spe­cif­ic role in the re­fin­ery restart or whether it in­tends to bid, part­ner with an en­ti­ty or pro­vide ser­vices. Se­nior OW­TU of­fi­cials said the union re­mains com­mit­ted to be­ing part of the restart process and that tan­gi­ble ef­forts to­wards this are on­go­ing.

Look­ing ahead to the con­fer­ence, Mooni­lal said, “We have a man­date to at­tract in­vest­ment in T&T’s do­mes­tic re­sources, pri­mar­i­ly work re­lat­ed to fur­ther drilling in the on­shore sec­tor in­volv­ing Her­itage. We’d al­so like to make a pitch for ex­pand­ed de­vel­op­ment of deep and ul­tra-deep wa­ters in our mar­itime space.”

“When we meet the oil ma­jors in Guyana, we in­tend rais­ing mat­ters of in­vest­ment in T&T re­gard­ing both on­shore and off­shore, and we’d like to raise with some of those com­pa­nies the more dif­fi­cult ar­eas where we may not have been able to at­tract in­vest­ment.”

Mooni­lal said he is op­ti­mistic about T&T’s en­gage­ment in Guyana and not­ed he has been in con­tact for sev­er­al months with Guyana’s Min­is­ter of Nat­ur­al Re­sources, Vick­ram Bhar­rat. He added that Ma­ha Shiv­ara­tri is “an aus­pi­cious time to set foot in Guyana to build en­er­gy part­ner­ships for the next gen­er­a­tion.”

He al­so point­ed to US Of­fice of For­eign As­sets Con­trol (OFAC) li­cences 49 and 50 as open­ing “a new gate­way” for T&T’s en­er­gy de­vel­op­ment.

Prais­ing the Prime Min­is­ter’s lead­er­ship on cross-bor­der en­er­gy ini­tia­tives, Mooni­lal said, “When you look at the cross-bor­der fields, the Drag­on Field and Exxon­Mo­bil, we have a sense we’re on to some­thing ex­treme­ly sig­nif­i­cant that may even­tu­al­ly change T&T’s eco­nom­ic fu­ture.”