Refinery revival tops talks between Rubio, Kamla

Da­reece Po­lo in St Kitts

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says restart­ing the for­mer Petrotrin (Guaracara) re­fin­ery was a cen­tral fo­cus of her bi­lat­er­al meet­ing with Unit­ed States Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio, as T&T seeks to deep­en en­er­gy and se­cu­ri­ty co­op­er­a­tion with Wash­ing­ton.

The talks took place on the side­lines of the 50th Reg­u­lar Meet­ing of Cari­com Heads of Gov­ern­ment in Bas­seterre, St Kitts, where re­gion­al lead­ers gath­ered amid grow­ing geopo­lit­i­cal ten­sions and shift­ing al­liances across the Amer­i­c­as.

Speak­ing with re­porters short­ly af­ter the meet­ing, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the dis­cus­sions built on pre­vi­ous en­gage­ments with US of­fi­cials.

“We fol­lowed up on some of those dis­cus­sions for fur­ther co­op­er­a­tion in en­er­gy and in se­cu­ri­ty,” she said. “We dis­cussed the re­open­ing of the Trinidad (Petrotrin) re­fin­ery. As you know, we have been very se­ri­ous about get­ting that re­fin­ery re­opened.”

The re­fin­ery, once a pil­lar of the coun­try’s econ­o­my, has been shut­tered since 2018, with the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment en­gag­ing in talks to lease the fa­cil­i­ty be­fore be­ing vot­ed out of of­fice. Per­sad-Bisses­sar said Ru­bio com­mit­ted to as­sist­ing in ad­vanc­ing her ad­min­is­tra­tion’s plans for the re­fin­ery.

“He agreed that he would put us on to their De­part­ment of En­er­gy to as­sist us in seek­ing to find the best part­ner to open that re­fin­ery,” she ex­plained.

The Prime Min­is­ter not­ed that sev­er­al en­ti­ties have al­ready ex­pressed in­ter­est. She said Min­is­ter of En­er­gy Dr Roodal Moo­nial has met with one prospec­tive part­ner, while she al­so held dis­cus­sions with an­oth­er in St Kitts. Ad­di­tion­al bi­lat­er­al talks were sched­uled, in­clud­ing with rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the African Ex­port-Im­port Bank.

“Of course, at the end of the day, we’ll choose the best that we think we can get,” she said.

Be­yond en­er­gy, the meet­ing cov­ered re­gion­al flash­points, in­clud­ing Haiti, Cu­ba, and en­gage­ment with Venezuela. Per­sad-Bisses­sar de­scribed Ru­bio as “very fa­mil­iar with the is­sues in the re­gion” and in­di­cat­ed that more de­tails would be shared when she meets US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump on March 7.

For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sean Sobers ex­pressed op­ti­mism about the tra­jec­to­ry of bi­lat­er­al ties.

“We are very hope­ful that our con­tin­ued close re­la­tion­ship with the US will see T&T’s for­tunes con­tin­ue to grow,” he said.

Sobers al­so de­fend­ed the Prime Min­is­ter’s re­marks on Cu­ba dur­ing the open­ing of the Cari­com ses­sion, where she took a firm po­si­tion on de­mo­c­ra­t­ic gov­er­nance.

“We are all here as elect­ed mem­bers of par­lia­ment, de­mo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elect­ed, and it is re­al­ly hyp­o­crit­i­cal to call our­selves so elect­ed and then sup­port a sys­tem that prof­fers or holds up dic­ta­tor­ship. And so we stand with the peo­ple of Cu­ba, but we call for free and fair elec­tions.”

Ru­bio al­so met with St Vin­cent and the Grenadines Prime Min­is­ter God­win Fri­day, who won elec­tions in No­vem­ber last year af­ter the long tenure of for­mer leader Dr Ralph Gon­salves.

Fri­day de­scribed his own talks with Ru­bio as a “very con­struc­tive meet­ing” and dis­missed sug­ges­tions that the US en­gage­ment was in­tend­ed to di­vide Cari­com.

“No, I don’t (think so). I think that this is an op­por­tu­ni­ty for us to en­gage in mean­ing­ful and very di­rect con­ver­sa­tion with the Unit­ed States Sec­re­tary of State. Very, very im­por­tant re­la­tion­ship,” he said.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­turned to Trinidad last night fol­low­ing her par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Cari­com sum­mit, which ends on Fri­day.