Trinidad: Petrotrin to shutdown on November 30th

(TRINIDAD GUARDIAN) No­vem­ber 30 is the date set for the clo­sure of state oil com­pa­ny Petrotrin.

That date was giv­en to the Oil­fields Work­ers Trade Union (OW­TU) dur­ing a meet­ing with the Board of Petrotrin on Thurs­day.

Chair­man Wil­fred Es­pinet told union of­fi­cials No­vem­ber 30 is the day the com­pa­ny will cease op­er­a­tions and per­ma­nent em­ploy­ees will re­ceive their ter­mi­na­tion pack­ages in ac­cor­dance with the rel­e­vant col­lec­tive agree­ments.

He said the com­pa­ny will meet next week with the union and as­so­ci­a­tions rep­re­sent­ing staff at the en­er­gy com­pa­ny pro­vide fur­ther in­for­ma­tion on the ex­it pro­ce­dure.

Es­pinet said an al­ter­na­tive pro­pos­al pre­sent­ed to the board one week ago by the OW­TU was “not a vi­able op­tion, and the tran­si­tion to the clo­sure of the re­fin­ery will pro­ceed as planned.

At the end of the two hour meet­ing, Es­pinet told OW­TU of­fi­cials their pro­pos­al failed to ad­dress “crit­i­cal is­sues re­gard­ing fi­nanc­ing and prof­itabil­i­ty and there was “in­suf­fi­cient in­for­ma­tion to give us an un­der­stand­ing of how the plan would work.” He said a lease pro­pos­al from the union that was dif­fer­ent to what had been pre­sent­ed pre­vi­ous­ly is be­ing re­viewed but there is now no turn­ing back and they will pro­ceed with plans for a “safe and ef­fi­cient shut­down of the re­fin­ery and the preser­va­tion of the com­pa­ny’s as­sets.”

At a po­lit­i­cal meet­ing in Point Fortin on Thurs­day night, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said his ad­min­is­tra­tion will not back down from the de­ci­sion to close the Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery. He said he had of­fered the union the op­por­tu­ni­ty to present a busi­ness pro­pos­al but the OW­TU brought noth­ing new to the ta­ble.

“When you look at it, every­thing about the pro­pos­al is about main­tain­ing the sta­tus quo. That could not be se­ri­ous,” he said

Dr Row­ley said the OW­TU’s pro­pos­al is short in very many ar­eas” but he did not in­tend to speak for the board which will speak to the gov­ern­ment “at the ap­pro­pri­ate time.”

“We have tak­en a de­ci­sion to fix the prob­lem at Pointe-a-Pierre and that de­ci­sion was based on sound eval­u­a­tion in the in­ter­est, not just of Petrotrin or the Petrotrin work­ers, but all of Trinidad and To­ba­go,” he said.

He ad­mit­ted that clo­sure will have a “neg­a­tive im­pact on quite a num­ber of peo­ple,” but said Gov­ern­ment was tak­ing steps “to min­imise the neg­a­tive ef­fect.” He re­mind­ed the gath­er­ing that Point Fortin al­so had a re­fin­ery that was closed down, but sub­se­quent­ly oth­er in­dus­tries were set up.