Columbus Energy gains approval to drill Saffron prospect

30 -9- 2019
Columbus Energy, the oil and gas producer and explorer onshore Trinidad with the ambition to grow in South America, provided further information on its planned drilling campaign.

The Ministry of Energy and Energy Industries granted approval for the drilling of the Saffron well, in the South West Peninsula (‘SWP’). The Company is preparing for the spudding of the Saffron prospect, with the mobilisation of the rig and associated equipment currently in process.

Leo Koot, Executive Chairman of Columbus, commented:

‘The Company is pleased to have received Ministry approval to drill the Saffron prospect. The Company is currently mobilising the rig and associated equipment to the drilling site. We will update the market as drilling activities progress.‘

Source: Columbus Energy

South West Peninsula Exploration – Appraisal – Development 24 September 2019

1 Inniss Trinity Summary

•  2 producing fields   Bonasse & Icacos
• 3 separate Private Petroleum Licences (“PPL’s”) covering the SWP , Bonasse , Icacos* $ Cedros*
• All fields and PPL’s are held 100% by Columbus.
  • PPL’s are underpinned by Leases with various private landowners. The landowners own the mineral rights and grant access to those mineral rights to Columbus via the Leases.
  • Economics of PPL’s (royalties paid to landowners and taxes paid to Govt) are superior to IPSC’s for other Columbus assets.
  • * Subject to formal grant of PPL by Ministry of Energy and Energy Industries. South West Peninsula – Background

2 Inniss Trinity Geological & Geophysical Summary Data on the geology of the SWP can be derived from:

• • 53 wells that have been drilled in the broader SWP area
  • Airborne Gravity Gradiometry and Magnetic survey
  • Surface geochemistry
  • 160km² 3D seismic survey (completed 2002/2003 and subsequently reprocessed)
  • ~1000 line km of 2D seismic (various vintages)
  • In 2019, Columbus engaged EPI Group (an independent consultancy) to review the SWP prospectivity, conduct a well failure analysis and to advise on the prospects available for drilling.
  • Based on this review, alongside internal work, Columbus has identified 2 prospects available for drilling in 2019:  Saffron & Clove South West Peninsula – Background 3 UBOT-1 well to Bonasse field seismic line
  • The UBOT-1 well was drilled in 1936 and flowed oil (207 bbl) from the Lower Cruse formation
  • The primary objective of the Saffron well is to test the Lower Cruse updip from UBOT-1. 4 Clove Prospect
  • The Clove prospect will test three different horizons, Incised Valley Sands, the Upper Cruse and the Middle Cruse. The Bonasse field is already producing from Upper & Middle Cruse sands.
  • The Clove well will reach total depth at ~ 2200 – 2500 ft. 5 Saffron prospect
  • The Saffron well will test three different horizons, the Upper Cruse, the Middle Cruse and the Lower Cruse (the primary target).
  • The prospectivity of the Upper Cruse and Middle Cruse sands are difficult to judge based on available data.
  • The Geological Chance of Success (45%) relates the to Lower Cruse.

The Saffron well will reach total depth at ~ 4000 – 4500 ft. 6 Saffron prospect (field development)

1.  – Structure may be segmented into multiple compartments and risk will increase downdip as larger column heights are involved Reservoir effectiveness
2. – UBOT produced 207bbl, but productivity uncertain LOCATION A INLINE: 2151 XLINE: 2010 Unrisked Gross STOIIP (MMbbl)
3. – Saffron field development :  A more detailed seismic interpretation has resulted in an improved correlation of FRM1/ACD4 stratigraphy into the Bonasse area & refined the geological model).
4. The Saffron well’s primary target – Lower Cruse – has a 45% geological chance of success with a Pmean STOIIP of 77mmbbl (~ 11.5 mmbbl recoverable) for the field development.
5. Clove prospect (single well development) Chance of Geological Success 0.66 1 in: 1.5 Critical risks Trap – structure may be segmented into multiple compartments Charge – Height of column is unknown and risk increases moving towards Bonasse
6. Primary Target Unrisked Gross STOIIP (MMbbl) – Single Well Development P90 0.03 P50 0.17 P10 0.44 Pmean 0.21 9 TWSL Drilling Rig T-38
7. Columbus’s preferred rig for the Saffron and Clove prospects   HRI Load craft carrier mounted   1100HP Load craft 1000 Drilling Rig (410K lbs hook load capacity, 10,500’)  250T Top Drive, Forum Automatic Pipe Handler, NOV Iron Roughneck.  2 x 1000HP triplex Mud pumps, 450 bbl Circulation System outfitted with all equipment required for drilling in Trinidad.   1 x 563KVA and 1 x 500KVA Generators.
8. Rig selection & Permitting Permitting and Site preparations + Private petroleum licence granted + Certificate of Environmental Clearance (“CEC”) modified to include drilling location
9. Surface locations selected + Key documents submitted to Ministry of Energy and Energy Industries
10. Access road ready and drilling site being prepared
11. Saffron field development – economics (11.5mmbbl recoverable) Unlevered IRR 117% NPV10 $88 million* * Based on 11.5mmbbl recoverable development Key economic indicators Quick to production -20 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180 -5 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 US Dollars (miillions) US Dollars (millions) Years Saffron Development (11.5mmbbl) Annual Cashflow Cumulative Cashflow
12. Forward Looking Statements and Qualified Person’s Statement Certain statements in this presentation are “forward looking statements” which are not based on historical facts but rather on the management’s expectations regarding the Company’s future growth. These expectations include the results of operations, performance, future capital, other expenditures (amount, nature and sources of funding thereof), competitive advantages, planned exploration and development drilling activity including the results of such drilling activity, business prospects and opportunities. Such statements reflect management’s current beliefs and assumptions and are based on information currently available. Forward looking statements involve significant known risks, unknown risks and uncertainties. A number of factors could cause the actual results to differ materially from the results denoted in these statements, including risks associated with vulnerability to general economic market and business conditions, competition, environmental and other regulatory changes, the results of exploration, development drilling and related activities, actions by governmental authorities, the availability of capital markets, reliance on key personnel, uninsured and underinsured losses and other factors, many of which are beyond the control of the Company. Although these statements are based upon what management believes to be reasonable assumptions, the Company cannot assure investors that the actual results will be consistent with these forward looking statements. Qualified Person’s statement The information contained in this document has been reviewed and approved by Stewart Ahmed, Chief Technical Officer (Trinidad), for Columbus Energy Resources plc. Mr Ahmed has a BSc in Mining and Petroleum Engineering and is a member of the Society of Petroleum Engineers. Mr Ahmed has over 33 years of relevant experience in the oil industry.

Columbus Energy update on drilling
25 9 2019
Columbus Energy, provided further information on its planned drilling campaign in the South West Peninsula, Trinidad.

Civil works and contracting for the spudding of the Saffron prospect continues, on track for having the rig on site by the end of September 2019.

In conjunction with the planning for the Saffron well, the Company has updated the prospectivity for the Saffron well. The Pmean STOIIP for the Lower Cruse has increased from 66mmbbl to 77mmbbl, with a corresponding increase in the recoverable volumes from a development from 10mmbbl to 11.5mmbbl. This increases the base case NPV10 from circa US$79m to circa US$88m. This prospectivity has been validated by EPI Group, the independent geological and geophysical consultancy company.

Click here for updated presentation regarding the South West Peninsula

Leo Koot, Executive Chairman of Columbus, commented:

‘The Company is continuing with the preparation for the drilling of the Saffron prospect in the South West Peninsula, Trinidad. The Company has updated the prospectivity for the Saffron well, with the Pmean STOIIP for the Lower Cruse increased from 66mmbbl to 77mmbbl and the recoverable volumes from a development increasing from 10mmbbl to 11.5mmbbl. This has increases the base case NPV10 for the Saffron development from circa US$79m to circa US$88m. We will update the market as the drilling of the well progresses. Consolidated information on the Saffron and Clove prospects can be found in a new presentation available on our website.’

Source: Columbus Energy

Columbus update on Inniss-Trinity IPSC
5 9 2019

Columbus Energy, provided an update about the Inniss-Trinity Incremental Production Service Contract (IPSC).

Update on CO2 pilot project

Further to the Company’s announcement on 22 August 2019, the Company announced that work is continuing with Predator Oil & Gas to advance the CO2 pilot project on the Inniss-Trinity IPSC.

Columbus successfully completed workover operations to survey downhole the AT-4 and AT-13 wells on the Inniss-Trinity IPSC in preparation for future CO2 injection and enhanced oil production. This follows the same workover operations successfully completed in August on the AT-5X well.

Predator confirmed to Columbus that based on the AT-13 survey results, the Herrera #2 Sand has been selected as being accessible for CO2 enhanced oil recovery (“EOR”) operations. AT-5X and AT-13 have been selected by Predator as the preferred initial wells

Leo Koot, Executive Chairman of Columbus, commented:

‘Columbus and Predator continue to advance the CO2 pilot project. We believe the CO2 pilot project on Inniss-Trinity will give all parties a valuable insight into an alternative enhanced oil recovery mechanism for Trinidad and has the potential to transform oil & gas operations in the Inniss-Trinity field and in similar fields in Trinidad. We look forward to working with Predator to further advance the project.’

Background – Inniss Trinity IPSC

Fram Exploration (Trinidad) (‘FRAM’), the operator of the Inniss-Trinity field and a wholly-owned subsidiary of Columbus, is party to the Inniss-Trinity IPSC with Heritage Petroleum Company.

The Company’s interest in the Inniss-Trinity field benefits from an agreement with Predator whereby Predator will help plan and fund a CO2 EOR Pilot Project. FRAM remains the operator of the Inniss-Trinity IPSC, including work for the CO2 pilot project.

Source: Columbus Energy

Shell

Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley (3rd from right) and Minister in the Office of the Prime Minister Stuart Young (2nd from right) with Shell officials at Whitehall on Monday.

Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley and Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Stu­art Young met a high-lev­el ex­ec­u­tive team from Shell at White­hall, fol­lowing sign­ing of agree­ments be­tween the Gov­ern­ment and Shell which will re­sult in eco­nom­ic im­prove­ment for the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go. Both par­ties re­main com­mit­ted to work­ing to­geth­er to se­cure the long-term fu­ture of the lo­cal gas in­dus­try.

Maarten Wet­se­laar, Shell’s Di­rec­tor In­te­grat­ed Gas and New En­er­gies led the vis­it­ing team which in­clud­ed De La Rey Ven­ter, Ex­ec­u­tive Vice Pres­i­dent of Shell’s In­te­grat­ed Gas Ven­ture busi­ness, Eu­gene Okpere Pres­i­dent and Coun­try Chair­man of Shell Trinidad and To­ba­go, Derek Hud­son, Con­sul­tant and An­ders Ek­vall, Busi­ness Op­por­tu­ni­ty Man­ag­er, Shell.

Touchstone Exploration Inc.

09 09 2019 –  Canadian explorer Touchstone announced that its first exploration well has encountered four zones with prospective natural gas accumulations on the Ortoire exploration block onshore, after less than a month’s drilling.

Highlights

• Coho-1 was drilled to a total depth of 8,560 feet in 28 days and is currently being cased for further evaluation.
• Coho-1 well logs indicate significant prospective natural gas pay in four unique sand packages in the Herrera sands.
• Upper Herrera Gr7b and Gr7c sands have indications of a total of 105 feet of net gas pay at measured depths between 5,486 and 7,240 feet.
• The drilling rig will be moving to the Company’s second exploration well on the Ortoire block.

The Coho-1 exploration well was spud on August 7, 2019 and reached a total measured depth of 8,560 feet (8,543 feet true vertical depth) on September 3, 2019 using Well Services Petroleum Rig #80. The well logs indicate four gas bearing packages in the Herrera member of the Mid-Miocene aged Cipero formation. Based upon wireline logging, two sand packages with approximately 64 feet of net gas pay were encountered in the upper Herrera Gr7b section between 5,486 feet and 5,782 feet. The Gr7b sand packages correlate to the offsetting Corosan-1 well drilled in 2001, where similar sands tested natural gas in excess of 8 million cubic feet per day. Wireline logging also indicated two prospective gas sand packages in the Herrera Gr7c section between 6,530 and 7,240 feet. These two sand packages contain a combined 41 feet of probable net gas pay which was not tested in historical offsetting wells. Logging identified the presence of oil sands in the lower Herrera Gr7b repeat section at a depth of 7,788 feet. This lower quality 100-foot thick gross interval does not appear to be commercially prospective but proves the presence of hydrocarbons in this previously untested thrust sheet and may de-risk future exploration opportunities.

The Coho-1 well was drilled on time and within budget. The Company is initiating a comprehensive testing plan to evaluate the economic potential of the prospective gas sands.

Following rig release at Coho-1, Well Services Petroleum Rig #80 will be mobilized to the Cascadura-1 location, the second of four initial exploration wells the Company plans to drill on the Ortoire property. Cascadura-1 is expected to be drilled to a total dept of 8,190 feet and is targeting two oil zones in the Herrera sands in a fault block separate from the discovery at Coho-1.

Paul R. Baay, President and Chief Executive Officer, commented:

‘Although Coho-1 targeted the smallest prospect in our Ortoire exploration inventory, the initial drilling results represent significant potential growth for the Company. The presence of hydrocarbons in the turbidite sands of the Herrera confirms that our geological model is correct, and our drilling operations confirm that our team can drill future wells in a safe, timely and cost-efficient manner. This result gives the Board and Management a great deal of confidence to move directly to the Cascadura location which will test a separate structure targeting significant oil prospects in a similar geological setting.‘

James Shipka, Chief Operating Officer, stated:

‘We are very pleased to have found 105 feet of prospective gas pay at Coho-1 which we will now evaluate for commercial production. The well was drilled to evaluate the untested Herrera Gr7 repeat section and follow up on the offsetting Corosan-1 well which was never placed on production. The primary objective in Coho-1 was natural gas but oil noted in the repeat section of the well confirms the presence of previously unproven hydrocarbons and confirms the potential for further exploration targets in the lower Herrera sand sheets within the Ortoire exploration block.‘

The Coho-1 and Cascadura-1 wells are the first two of four minimum commitment earning exploration wells under Touchstone’s Ortoire Exploration and Production Licence. The Company has an 80% working interest in the licence but is responsible for 100% of the drilling, completion and testing costs associated with the initial four exploration wells. Heritage Petroleum Company holds the remaining 20% working interest.

Touchstone has no reserves associated with the Coho-1 and Cascadura-1 wells as per the Company’s December 31, 2018 Reserves Report.

An independent prospect evaluation review prepared by GLJ Petroleum Consultants Ltd. dated January 16, 2019 and effective December 31, 2018 estimated 2,058 thousand barrels of oil equivalent (best estimate) of unrisked Contingent Resources (Development Pending) and 1,190 thousand barrels of oil equivalent (best estimate) of unrisked Prospective Resources (Prospect) for the Company’s 80% working interest in the Coho-1 well (residual natural gas and natural gas liquids).

Further, the evaluation estimated 944 thousand barrels of crude oil (best estimate) of unrisked Contingent Resources (Development Pending) for the Company’s 80% working interest in the Cascadura structure.

Properties include Bovallius, Moruga, New Grant, Ortoire, Otaheite, Piparo, Rousillac, Siparia and St. John.

LINK TO PRESENTATION

Source: Touchstone Exploration

Range Resources sale

03 09 2019

London-listed Range Resources announced that following continued negotiations with the Company’s debt holder LandOcean Energy Services, the parties successfully signed a binding conditional Sale and Purchase Agreement for the sale of Range Resources Trinidad Limited (‘RRTL’) to investment firm LandOcean (the ‘SPA’) in exchange for (i) offsetting all outstanding debt and payables (including the convertible note) due from Range and its subsidiaries to LandOcean and its subsidiaries, and (ii) a cash consideration of US$2.5 million.

Key highlights:

• Binding conditional agreements signed with LandOcean for the sale of RRTL in exchange for offsetting all outstanding debt due from Range to LandOcean (currently estimated at c. US$91 million) and cash consideration payable to Range of US$2.5 million;
• From the date of signing the SPA, all payables by Range to LandOcean under any debt agreements will be deferred, pending completion of the Transaction;
• Upon completion of the Transaction, the Company’s indebtedness will be fully extinguished and all debt agreements will be terminated;
• The first tranche of the cash consideration of US$0.5 million will be payable upfront as deposit. Range will provide mortgages over its workover and swabbing rigs as security, with such mortgages to be released upon completion or termination of the SPA;
• The completion is subject to shareholder and government approvals;
• Range’s shareholder meeting to consider the Transaction is planned for November 2019;
• As part of a wider restructuring, the Company continues to evaluate new opportunities and to review its strategy with regards to the drilling business in Trinidad and interests in the oil and gas project in Indonesia.

Range Chairman, Kerry Gu, commented:

‘I am delighted that we have been successful at signing this milestone agreement with LandOcean, which (if completed) will allow the Company to be completely debt-free and have sufficient cash resources to progress with new opportunities. The removal of debt is a fantastic outcome for the Company’s shareholders and is vital to restore our financial health, increase liquidity and improve shareholder sentiment. I am also pleased with the consideration value of RRTL of almost US$95 million which is a testament to the quality of our Trinidad upstream assets.

Over the coming months, our focus will be aimed at securing the necessary approvals to complete this transformative transaction. As part of a wider strategy, we will also continue to evaluate new acquisition targets and review opportunities for our drilling business in Trinidad and interests in the Indonesian oil and gas project.

I am very excited about the future of our Company and once again would like to thank our stakeholders for their continued support during this process.‘

Source: Range Resources

JERA, Vitol in First Atlantic LNG Swap under Baltic’s BLNG3

LNG traders JERA Global Markets and Vitol executed the first Atlantic LNG freight swap against The Baltic Exchange’s BLNG3 assessment in a bilateral trade arranged by Affinity Financial Products LLP.

The BLNG3 assessment provides a freight rate benchmark for LNG shipments between Sabine Pass and Tokyo. The benchmark is on a time charter equivalent basis with a panel of independent shipbrokers providing headline time charter rates and a ballast bonus and/or position fee assessment to give an effective rate paid by a charterer on round voyage terms.

“Following on from our initial trade in July when the Baltic’s BLNG1 assessment went live, we are very pleased to have been able to arrange a bilateral trade against the BLNG3 route,” said Benjamin Gibson, Head of LNG Derivatives at Affinity.

“Our BLNG3 route only went live in mid-August and we’re delighted to see the first trade settled against it. The Baltic’s LNG assessments are being quickly adopted by this developing market as an accurate and reliable benchmark,” Baltic Exchange Chief Executive Mark Jackson added.

“Further bilateral trades will help develop the understanding and adoption of freight benchmarks within the industry,” Gibson added.

 

BHP President is Chairman of Republic Bank

Vin­cent Pereira, Pres­i­dent of BHP T&T is the new Chair­man of the Board of Di­rec­tors of Re­pub­lic Bank Ltd and Re­pub­lic Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings Ltd. Ronald Har­ford will re­tire from the Board of Di­rec­tors of Re­pub­lic Bank Ltd and Re­pub­lic Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings Ltd on De­cem­ber 31, 2019 af­ter 57 years of ser­vice, the last 23 at the helm of the bank.

Har­ford was ap­point­ed Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor of Re­pub­lic Bank Ltd in 1997. He led the trans­for­ma­tion of the Bank from a pri­mar­i­ly do­mes­tic in­sti­tu­tion to a glob­al fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion. fol­low­ing the re­tire­ment of the Chair­man, Frank Bar­sot­ti, in 2003, Har­ford was ap­point­ed Chair­man and held dual roles of Chair­man and Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor. He re­tired as Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor in 2005 and re­mained Chair­man of the Group.

In 1997 Har­ford led the merg­er of Bank of Com­merce T&T Ltd with Re­pub­lic Bank Ltd and the ac­qui­si­tions of the Group’s op­er­a­tions in Grena­da, Guyana, Bar­ba­dos, Suri­name, Ghana, and the Cay­man Is­lands and the in­tend­ed pur­chase of the nine ter­ri­to­ries from Sco­tia­bank.

Un­der his tenure the share price of the Group in­creased from $29 in 1997 to $120 in 2019.

Re­pub­lic Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings Ltd (RFHL) and its sub­sidiaries an­nounced af­ter-tax prof­it of $783.2 mil­lion for the nine month pe­ri­od end­ed March 31, 2019.

 

Heritage acting CEO

Ar­lene Chow, Her­itage in­ter­im Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer earns a month­ly salary of $150,000 plus perks, act­ing Prime Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert con­firmed in Par­lia­ment, re­ply­ing to Op­po­si­tion ques­tions on the terms and con­di­tions of em­ploy­ment of Chow.

She was ap­point­ed for six months af­ter Her­itage CEO Mike Wylie re­turned to the US ago for can­cer treat­ment and was said to be run­ning the com­pa­ny from the US to­geth­er with a lo­cal man­age­ment team.

Last month Gov­ern­ment, stat­ed a per­ma­nent of­fi­cer had to be in place to lead an im­por­tant en­ter­prise like Her­itage . Chow was ap­point­ed soon af­ter.

Chow is al­so re­ceiv­ing a com­pa­ny car and $1,000 month­ly cell phone al­lowance. She was hired for six months from Sep­tem­ber 1 and the con­tract can be ter­mi­nat­ed by her or the com­pa­ny at any time.

On whether Chow will be hired as CEO per­ma­nent­ly, Im­bert said Her­itage’s Board in­tends to do a world­wide search for a per­ma­nent CEO to serve “in due course.”

The En­er­gy Min­istry se­lect­ed Chow due to her strong 40-year ex­pe­ri­ence in the en­er­gy sec­tor.

This in­cludes chief op­er­at­ing of­fi­cer at At­lantic LNG, work­ing with BP Alas­ka and oth­er se­nior posts.

He laud­ed the fact that she came for­ward to as­sist in the sit­u­a­tion when a sit­u­a­tion of un­fore­seen cir­cum­stances “could have re­sult­ed in se­vere trau­ma to the oil com­pa­ny” and he thanked Chow for com­ing to as­sist the coun­try.

The Gov­ern­ment-ap­point­ed com­mit­tee man­dat­ed to eval­u­ate bids and make rec­om­men­da­tions for the sale/or lease of the Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery is ex­pect­ed to make rec­om­men­da­tions to Cab­i­net in the next week “bar­ring un­fore­seen cir­cum­stances,”

The team in­cludes pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tor of­fi­cials, in­clud­ing the Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Fi­nance, Vish­nu Dhan­paul, for­mer Petrotrin of­fi­cials and labour and busi­ness rep­re­sen­ta­tives.

In Ju­ly Gov­ern­ment pro­ject­ed they would have com­plet­ed work on rec­om­men­da­tions by Au­gust 31. But yes­ter­day Im­bert said the com­mit­tee has “not yet de­ter­mined the buy­er”.

That state­ment has raised spec­u­la­tion that sale—rather than lease—of the re­fin­ery may be the even­tu­al di­rec­tion of the en­ti­ty. About 70 bids were re­ceived in the first stage of the mat­ter in April.

By Au­gust, it was re­port­ed that it had nar­rowed down to 25 par­ties be­ing in­volved.

Young in Caracas

National Security Minister and MInister in the Office of the Prime Minister Stuart Young meets with Venezuelan ministers and officials in Caracas, yesterday.
Minister Stuart Young meets Venezuelan ministers and officials -Office of the Prime Minister

20 09 2019

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, Stu­art Young, met Venezue­lan strongman Nico­las Maduro in Cara­cas for dis­cus­sions on mat­ters of en­er­gy and na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty.

The Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter con­firmed that Young vis­it­ed Cara­cas dur­ing the day to dis­cuss mat­ters of in­ter­est to the Bo­li­var­i­an Re­pub­lic of Venezuela and the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“Min­is­ter Young met with Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro, Vice Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­driguez, Min­is­ter for In­ter­nal Re­la­tions, Jus­tice and Peace, Nestor Reverol, Min­is­ter of En­er­gy, Manuel Queve­do, Min­is­ter of For­eign Af­fairs, Jorge Ar­reaza and Vice Min­is­ter for the Caribbean/Am­bas­sador to Cari­com, Raúl Li­Causi.” Beset by tension Trinidad and To­ba­go con­tin­ues to recog­nise the zombie pres­i­dent, de­spite many coun­tries, in­clud­ing the Unit­ed States, recog­nis­ing the head ofthe Na­tion­al As­sem­bly, Juan Guaidó in­stead.

Trinidad and To­ba­go have been in dis­cus­sions with Venezuela over the Drag­on Field be­tween the two coun­tries.

Minister Stuart Young meets  Venezuelan ministers and officials -Office of the Prime Minister

On Au­gust 27, 2018, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and Maduro signed an agree­ment in Cara­cas that will al­low the is­land to ac­cess gas from the Drag­on Field.

Row­ley had told the me­dia then, “We may have been able to save our in­dus­try by get­ting a se­cure source of gas for the down­stream sec­tor. It may over time al­so al­low us to look at the ex­pan­sion of the down­stream sec­tor and in­vest­ments there, as long as we can show in­vestors we have a se­cured stream of gas.”

The Prime Min­is­ter was not will­ing at the time to dis­close the price of the gas, point­ing to com­mer­cial con­fi­den­tial­i­ty, but he re­vealed it will be 150 mil­li­on stan­dard cu­bic feet per day (mm­scf/d), with the pos­si­bil­i­ty of it in­creas­ing to 300 mm­scf/d.

The pipeline car­ry­ing the gas from Venezuela’s Drag­on Gas field in East­ern Venezuela to Shell’s Hi­bis­cus plat­form off the North Coast will be built and owned in a joint ven­ture be­tween the NGC and Shell Trinidad. The es­ti­mat­ed cost of the con­struc­tion of the pipeline is close to TT $1 bil­li­on.

MAIDEN SPEECH AT UNGA

(See UN / USA  page and OPMTT website for details) Links

On Republic Day, PM Rowley told diaspora in New York that his maiden speech set the record straight on world affairs.

“The reason I haven’t been here before to a General Assembly is because it coincides with budget preparations every year. So coming here for a whole week, with the budget due in a few days, has always been very difficult. But this year, because of the number of things that we have (going on) and (that) our name has been called in, I determined that whatever is happening at home I must come to put our position on record.”

Though small, the country has made significant impact, especially at the United Nations, with permanent representative to the UN, Ambassador Penelope Beckles’ role as the current chair of UN Women (which ends this year), as well as a vice president of this year’s General Assembly (which ends next September).

“Being a small country, we have done very well. I tell you that so you can understand that for a small country that we are well recognised and respected (within) the UN.”

He gave a summary of the country’s economy since 2015, including an update on the restructuring of Petrotrin and the sale of the Pointe-a-Pierre refinery to the Oilfield Workers’ Trade Union.

“Cabinet made a decision after the final evaluation out of the top three proposals (out of 77) and we chose the best. The best proposal came from a company owned by OWTU, who offered the government the best terms and conditions for the refinery. What that means, is that the OWTU is now in a position to go to its bankers and whoever is supporting it and has been given six weeks to come back to the government with their full proposal. As long as they can do that, the government will stand with them to ensure that the refinery (resumes) in the shortest possible time.”

“A refinery is a serious piece of equipment. It is a billion-dollar industry and they are embarking on something no other union is embarking on in TT, which is to run a serious business in the marketplace. So, a lot of the conversation will have to change. A lot of the attitude will have to change, and a lot of the investment will have to change because the taxpayer of TT is no longer (involved) and the new owner – the assets will be transferred to the union — is in charge of that responsibility.” Government had made it quite clear from the start that it is prepared to support the union “because we want the business to stay alive in TT.

“On that basis, when we made the announcement on who was selected, the government indicated we would give them three years to pay and we would give them a moratorium of three years before (they make) any payment. What that will do is to allow them to more easily raise the money that is required to start the refinery and have a cash flow to keep the refinery going. An operating refinery is of more benefit – a serious economic benefit (especially) in south Trinidad and the government will give them any assistance provided they (have) serious proposals and so far they have demonstrated a level of seriousness.”

The Prime Minister took questions on crime and illegal ammunition, public service delivery, climate change and flooding and marijuana legislation.

Rowley rang the iconic NASDAQ bell  to start  trading in  the  temple of  capitalism and  then met Edward Knight, Nasdaq’s Vice Chairman. With better management, Petrotrin may by now be listed on the Nasdaq, making the country a beacon of prosperity instead of parody.
The United States is the largest trading partner for CARICOM and its world-class companies Exxon, Hess, Chevron and EOG are major investors in the petroleum industry of Guyana, Venezuela and Trinidad & Tobago.

It is a significant donor of aid to the region and a bastion of democracy, the best antidote to totalitarian restrictions. Hopefully, regional leaders will soon unite under its banner of freedom and enterprise, to create wealth, security and peace.

Pointe-a-Pierre need not be a ghost town 

POINTE-A-PIERRE COMPANY LIMITED (PPCL)
The National Investment Fund three (3) fixed rate bond series were heavily oversubscribed, with 8,103 applications valued at $7.349 billion, 1.8 times the $4.0 billion offer.
Therefore, over $3 billion could be invested by the public as shareholders in a new company to rescue the Petrotrin legacy.. This languishing reservoir of cash can support privatisation of the significant iconic assets of port, land, hospital, club and school, prominent features of the landscape. TLL/Texaco bungalows and other buildings can be refurbished for housing and small enterprises including a supermarket. The well-appointed club with Olympic swimming pool, tennis and golf, is ideal as a country club. The Port and hospital can serve the petroleum industry of Guyana for which the school can be a technical training centre. This will stimulate a shareholding democracy with higher returns than bonds.
Instead of a second National Investment Fund Bond Issue, proceeds from the sale of shares held by CLICO valued at $2.6 billion can be invested in PPCL. Thus the port and hinterland can remain intact and Pointe-a-Pierre can regain its cachet and prestige as a bastion of progress . It will be a profitable vehicle for fired workers to invest their compensation packages, boost the stock exchange and create employment. The state must act before the site becomes a rust belt awaiting the opening of the refinery.

25 09 2019

Gov­ern­ment ex­pects Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gies and Tech­nolo­gies Ltd to be able to restart the for­mer Petrotrin re­fin­ery in less than 12 months, since it does not im­me­di­ate­ly have to raise its (US)$700 mil­lion pay­ment. Gov­ern­ment ex­pect­s that the re­fin­ery will not have the same num­ber of work­ers as Petrotrin had.  Pa­tri­ot­ic ETC is ex­pect­ed to spend the “more re­al­is­tic fig­ure” of (US)$500 mil­lion to re­fur­bish the re­fin­ery in the first year.

The Finance Minister clar­i­fied the sit­u­a­tion re­gard­ing Pa­tri­ot­ic’s po­si­tion as the State’s pre­ferred bid­der for the Pointe a Pierre re­fin­ery and sought to jus­ti­fy the se­lec­tion of Pa­tri­ot­ic which was formed by the Oil­field Work­ers Trade Union.  The Gov­ern­ment   an­nounced that Pa­tri­ot­ic was grant­ed a three- year mora­to­ri­um on all pay­ments of prin­ci­pal and in­ter­est, to­wards re­fin­ery pur­chase and a fur­ther 10 years to com­plete the pay­ment of the sum of US$700 mil­lion it of­fered for the re­fin­ery. Pa­tri­ot­ic now has a month to present a “sat­is­fac­to­ry and com­pre­hen­sive” work plan on how it in­tends to com­plete the process go­ing for­ward, con­cern­ing 10 key de­liv­er­ables. When the process be­gan, cri­te­ria for a lessor/buy­er in­clud­ed that restart­ing of the re­fin­ery should oc­cur with­in the first half of 2020, con­ti­nu­ity of fu­el sup­port for T&T and oth­er fac­tors.

77 bids were ini­tial­ly re­ceived. This was nar­rowed to 25 par­ties. 8 sub­mit­ted non-bind­ing of­fers. 2 com­pa­nies BB En­er­gy and Sol lacked pro­pos­als to restart the re­fin­ery. An­oth­er com­pa­ny lacked re­fin­ery ex­pe­ri­ence. Edge­wood Hold­ings could not find a re­fin­ery op­er­at­ing part­ner.

When bids closed in Au­gust, fi­nal bid­ders were for­eign com­pa­nies Be­owulf En­er­gy and Klesh and lo­cal en­ti­ty, Pa­tri­ot­ic. Be­owulf had two for­mer Petrotrin man­agers among per­son­nel, Klesh had a re­fin­ery in Ger­many and Pa­tri­ot­ic had lo­cal ex­pe­ri­ence.

Each stat­ed they’d se­cure fi­nanc­ing in the next phase of the process.

Be­owulf had to do due dili­gence for up to six months to as­cer­tain what would be need­ed to restart the re­fin­ery and a fur­ther 15 months – max­i­mum 21- to restart. Klesh stat­ed they could restart “as soon as pos­si­ble” and Pa­tri­ot­ic gave 12 months.

All gave fig­ures for re­pair/re­fur­bish­ing. Not­ing a re­port­ed fig­ure of $1.4 bil­lion which Pa­tri­ot­ic may need, Im­bert said a more re­al­is­tic fig­ure was (US) $500m in the first year to deal with re­fur­bish­ing, en­vi­ron­men­tal is­sues and work­ing cap­i­tal.

Cab­i­net de­cid­ed on Pa­tri­ot­ic since it had the most “rea­son­able” re­sponse with most of the fac­tors. Pa­tri­ot­ic al­so had the most sig­nif­i­cant sum. Klesh of­fered noth­ing and Be­owulf of­fered (US)$42,000 month­ly over 15 years.

Se­lec­tion was via Trinidad Pe­tro­le­um Hold­ings Com­pa­ny Ltd’s ten­der reg­u­la­tions. Cab­i­net de­cid­ed to de­fer Pa­tri­ot­ic’s (US)$700 mil­lion pay­ment when the com­pa­ny was se­lect­ed.

“Pa­tri­ot­ic didn’t ask for it. We de­cid­ed we could give them terms as it would guar­an­tee the re­fin­ery’s restart if it wasn’t bur­dened by the need to come up with that cash im­me­di­ate­ly. We al­so had to take in­to con­text the re­fin­ery re­fur­bish­ment cost. We de­cid­ed we wouldn’t re­quire im­me­di­ate pay­ment so Pa­tri­ot­ic could get on with the busi­ness of re­fur­bish­ing and restart­ing.”

Since re­fin­ery prod­ucts have a big ef­fect on na­tion­al GDP, get­ting the re­fin­ery restart­ed was a top pri­or­i­ty. Gov­ern­ment felt if Pa­tri­ot­ic was re­lieved of the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to se­cure the cash for pur­chase, they would be in a bet­ter po­si­tion to restart it,

“Now we’ve in­di­cat­ed we’re not rush­ing Pa­tri­ot­ic to come up with the (US)$700m im­me­di­ate­ly, we ex­pect they’d be able to restart the re­fin­ery in less than 12 months.”

Pa­tri­ot­ic had said they need­ed 12 months, but Gov­ern­ment hopes they can short­en that.

Im­bert ac­knowl­edged many had asked if the re­fin­ery was so un­prof­itable over the years, why a new en­ti­ty could make a prof­it.

“There’s a sim­ple an­swer: the re­fin­ery was sad­dled with bil­lions in debt, which was a drain on rev­enue. Any­one tak­ing it over now won’t have to car­ry that debt. It al­so had high op­er­at­ing costs and was over­staffed and nev­er able to make a suit­able prof­it be­cause of its very high op­er­at­ing costs. We don’t ex­pect any en­ti­ty in­clud­ing Pa­tri­ot­ic to op­er­ate the re­fin­ery with the same num­ber of per­sons or the same cost struc­ture that was there be­fore. The two in­gre­di­ents for suc­cess are that re­fin­ery costs be far less and it shouldn’t be sad­dled with a heavy debt bur­den. We’d ex­pect they wouldn’t have a high op­er­at­ing cost – they have a good chance ….” Im­bert added.

He said “if the sit­u­a­tion goes through” Pa­tri­ot­ic will own the re­fin­ery, but – like with hous­es and banks – un­til Pa­tri­ot­ic pays off for the com­pa­ny, Gov­ern­ment would have a charge on the as­sets.

No word on Trafigu­ra as Pa­tri­ot­ic fi­nancier

On con­cerns that the re­fin­ery was giv­en to a union whose mem­bers were once blamed for Petrotrin’s fail­ure, he said if Gov­ern­ment didn’t think Pa­tri­ot­ic couldn’t get the nec­es­sary ex­per­tise and cap­i­tal to run the re­fin­ery, it would not have been se­lect­ed.

“Based on in­for­ma­tion avail­able to us the union has as­sem­bled a team of ex­perts in var­i­ous fields, they’ve done their ‘home­work’, we wouldn’t have se­lect­ed them if we thought they hadn’t. They’ve been able to arrange to part­ner with one of the largest fu­el traders in the world on mar­ket­ing their prod­uct, they linked with well es­tab­lished fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions in terms of fi­nanciers – so yes, we think they can do it,”

Pa­tri­ot­ic had sub­mit­ted in­for­ma­tion stat­ing they would en­ter an arrange­ment with multi­na­tion­al com­mod­i­ty trad­er, Trafigu­ra. But he said there was no in­for­ma­tion on Trafigu­ra fi­nanc­ing Pa­tri­ot­ic, “That’s not a name I’ve heard in terms of fi­nanc­ing,”

The mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing Pa­tri­ot­ic will sign with Trafigu­ra is on­ly for mar­ket­ing. Gov­ern­ment asked Pa­tri­ot­ic to pro­duce the MOU to get more in­for­ma­tion, but at this time Paria Fu­el Trad­ing con­tin­ues im­port­ing fu­el. If there’s to be a tran­si­tion­al plan from Paria to Trafigu­ra,   Gov­ern­ment will have to see it first.

Say­ing Gov­ern­ment knows Pa­tri­ot­ic can op­er­ate the re­fin­ery as “they did it for years”, he said the com­pa­ny must pro­duce a plan of their se­nior man­age­ment to show ex­pe­ri­enced man­agers. Gov­ern­ment gave Pa­tri­ot­ic a month to come up with a work­ing plan – con­firm the abil­i­ty to fi­nance start­up and re­fin­ery op­er­a­tions – but not to full fill the plan’s re­quire­ments.

Petrotrin non- oil as­sets

The Fi­nance Min­is­ter said a de­ci­sion is “close” on the fu­ture of Petrotrin’s non-oil as­sets – such as lands, club­hous­es, schools, hos­pi­tal- which haven’t been ob­tained by Pa­tri­ot­ic,

Pa­tri­ot­ic had bid for the as­sets, but Gov­ern­ment isn’t sell­ing those.   As­sets are be­ing kept to ex­am­ine whether it’s fea­si­ble for any arrange­ment with the pri­vate sec­tor.   The is­sue will be be­fore Cab­i­net and a de­ci­sion is close on what’ll be done.

Pa­tri­ot­ic’s bid would be “good for the coun­try, the work­ers and the trade union..”

On the PNM’s po­lit­i­cal prospects, he added,” If the union’s com­pa­ny suc­ceeds in restart­ing the re­fin­ery and op­er­at­ing it suc­cess­ful­ly, it’ll be good for every­body, I’d think it’d be (win-win) for every­body,”

Im­bert dis­missed as “non­sense”, com­ments by for­mer Minister Vas­ant Bharath on the sale.

(Gail Alexan­der)

Pointe a Pierre Refinery heading for catastrophe

Former trade minister Vasant Bharath said government’s proposed deal to sell the Pointe-a-Pierre refinery to an OWTU company is clearly a case of petty politicking which will end in catastrophe. The Finance Minister Colm Imbert said the mothballed refinery will be sold for US$700 million, with a three year moratorium after which the OWTU firm, Patriotic, will have 10 years to make payments.

Bharath is very passionate about it because of how much money this country has squandered in the past 50 years in shady deals that the population has had to swallow and it is the citizens who ultimately pay for it.

He said the most recent issue was the unexplained cancellation of a US$72 million contract between the HDC and the China Gezhouba Group for high-rise public housing. “Even with this Petrotrin the country has had to swallow $13 billion worth of bad deals signed by previous regimes. With the World GTL and Ultra Low Sulphur Project the country has had to swallow it and nobody has been held to account. We’ve just swept it under the carpet and on we go again.”

Bharath has two concerns, the moratorium and Patriotic’s capability.

Firstly, Imbert had said Patriotic was the only bidder with an up front cash offer, US$700 million. Bharath said in normal accounting parlance, “up front” means a company is handing over cash at the start, so it was self-contradictory for Imbert to then grant a moratorium.

Bharath said a moratorium as defined can only be granted by a lender of money, which the Government was not, even as they had insinuated the funds would come from elsewhere. “Imbert believes the country is made of complete fools and whatever he says we must take at face value.”

Secondly, Bharath lamented Patriotic’s lack of any track record. “They came to the Government, almost cap in hand. They have no financial statements to present. They have no collateral against which they are making the offer to use as security. They have no cash on any balance sheet because they have no balance sheet, and no audited accounts. They have no due diligence that would have been performed on the organisation. They have no organisational structure to show who are the people who are going to run the organisation.”

He said Patriotic doesn’t even have a web-site. “The OWTU has no track record of having done any business endeavour anywhere in the world. So, on what basis are you granting these people a golden handshake, this huge asset, where this country’s energy security now lies in these people’s hands? It makes no sense.”

Bharath predicted TT heading to a catastrophic ending in this matter. “And what happens then is that the Government walks away from it saying, ‘Well, we made a mistake. We gave them an opportunity. It didn’t work out.’ But who suffers? Who suffers because this company don’t have the expertise and experience to do any of these things? Who is going to stand up when for example they make a boo-boo because they didn’t bring enough fuel in? And they are not storing enough fuel and the country runs out? Or they can’t get the refinery up and running? I suspect one of the incentives they are going to ask the Government for, because they clearly have no money, is funding to start up the refinery.”

He said a newspaper put this cost as US$1.4 billion. “Where’s that money coming from?” Government is relying on people to ultimately just write it off, as for the Malcolm Jones and World GTL issue.

“A lot of people told me to leave this alone because it’s about the union and people will say you are anti-worker. I am not anti-worker. I’ve absolutely no problem whatsoever with employee participation and sharing profits and endorse this, but to just give away something like this in haste knowing that what’s presented to you doesn’t make sense and doesn’t add up, it is just reckless and irresponsible and is pure politicking. I can just imagine Imbert in the background grinning, he’s gotten away with it. It sickens me that we can accept this nonsense in this country.”

Bharath said that it is very difficult to prove the legal culpability for any lack of due diligence, a check on a company’s financial soundness before contracting with them.

However he said “the initial evaluation of 77 bidders had been done by an evaluation committee under Scotia Bank of Houston, Texas but, for the subsequent whittling down of bidders the exercise was handed over to a group of local individuals who, he alleged “knew what they were going to do.” Bharath said “the Government is calculating on the deal to win them the 2020 general election, with them ready to pick up the tab if the deal fails. “I’ve never felt so sickened by something. It is just in your face.”

OWTU working to meet deadline

The OW­TU con­firmed it is work­ing over­time to meet next month’s dead­line to sub­mit its busi­ness plan on the re­fin­ery to Gov­ern­ment, fol­low­ing con­cern that OW­TU may fail to meet the one-month dead­line to present the plan. Its in­ter­na­tion­al fi­nanciers may visit TT if nec­es­sary,

Gov­ern­ment an­nounced that OW­TU’s com­pa­ny – Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gies and Tech­nolo­gies Ltd- was se­lect­ed as the pre­ferred bid­der for the re­fin­ery. OW­TU was giv­en a month to sub­mit a busi­ness plan and a pro­ject­ed work plan for the re­fin­ery, which must be de­liv­ered by Oc­to­ber 20 .

“We feel we can meet the dead­line, we’re work­ing steadi­ly and dili­gent­ly and we’re on tar­get. There’s no ques­tion of try­ing to seek any ex­ten­sion. No….. We don’t have to go over­seas to meet our (in­ter­na­tion­al)fi­nanciers. If nec­es­sary they’ll prob­a­bly come here.”

On spec­u­la­tion fi­nanciers could control the re­fin­ery, OWTU stressed that there’s “on­ly one share­hold­er” in the re­fin­ery “and it’s OW­TU’s Pa­tri­ot­ic.”

OWTU un­der­stood anx­iety about s man­age­ment of the re­fin­ery, “We ap­pre­ci­ate it would have been the same sort of anx­i­ety that ex­ist­ed when TT at­tained In­de­pen­dence.”

The union dis­missed claims that a Suri­namese busi­ness­man was in­volved in the fi­nanc­ing or over­all ef­fort and un­der­stood spec­u­la­tion since MAK Eng­land’s Sha­heed Khan was in­volved in Oc­to­ber 2018 when MAK Eng­land, Sun­stone Eq­ui­ties and the union were dis­cussing OW­TU’s first al­ter­na­tive plan to clos­ing down the re­fin­ery. That was com­piled by OW­TU be­fore the re­fin­ery closed.

The plan was not ac­cept­ed and the re­fin­ery was closed. The Min­is­ter of Fi­nance said the ini­tial plan “wasn’t sat­is­fac­to­ry.” OWTU said MAK Eng­land and oth­ers from the 2018 plan are not to be con­fused with what Pa­tri­ot­ic is un­der­tak­ing now.

Oth­er union sources said that in the Pa­tri­ot­ic plan, multi­na­tion­al com­mod­i­ty trad­er Trafigu­ra will on­ly have tem­po­rary mar­ket­ing sta­tus dur­ing a tran­si­tion­al pe­ri­od to sup­ply fu­el be­tween when the re­fin­ery is hand­ed over and when it starts pro­duc­ing.

They pro­ject­ed the re­fin­ery restart date would be short­er than ini­tial­ly planned and the dates will be stat­ed in the OW­TU work plan for Gov­ern­ment which in­cludes de­tails on in­spec­tion, turn­around and oth­er time-lines as well as staffing which is linked to the busi­ness mod­el. They ad­mit­ted TT lost tal­ent be­cause some work­ers mi­grat­ed, though the up­com­ing ven­ture will pro­vide an op­por­tu­ni­ty for tal­ent to re­group.

UNC Pointe a Pierre MP David Lee said that as MP he’s hap­py if the re­fin­ery restarts and hopes OW­TU re­hires all ex­pe­ri­enced work­ers who were ter­mi­nat­ed, “I par­tic­u­lar­ly hope they em­ploy peo­ple from Mara­bel­la whose liveli­hood was wiped out when Petrotrin closed.”

Lee had once said con­stituents would nev­er for­give the Gov­ern­ment’s clo­sure of the re­fin­ery. “We (UNC) were nev­er in agree­ment with shut­ting down Petrotrin, so we’d be hap­py if it restarts. But be­cause there are many un­knowns in this sce­nario, peo­ple aren’t trust­ing it. We don’t know when it’ll restart. What’s been signed is a Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing (MOU); no dif­fer­ent from the MOU signed on the Venezue­lan Drag­on Field gas plan, that’s stalled.”

Un­til the sit­u­a­tion be­comes clear there will be pub­lic con­cern about fu­el se­cu­ri­ty. “It doesn’t mat­ter who buys the re­fin­ery, their plan has to stand cit­i­zens’ scruti­ny. OW­TU should un­der­stand this since they’d al­ways asked for ac­count­abil­i­ty and trans­paren­cy. Now they should live up to those words.”

Gary Aboud’s Fish­er­men and Friends of the Sea (FFS) group not­ed De­cem­ber 2018 promis­es by OW­TU head An­cel Ro­get to “bring back af­ford­able gas” if OW­TU was put in charge of the re­fin­ery and as­sur­ances of the re­turn of reg­u­lar gas for fish­er­men. “Mr, Ro­get’s state­ment has cre­at­ed a rea­son­able ex­pec­ta­tion in our fish­ing com­mu­ni­ties. We look for­ward and pa­tient­ly await the re­sump­tion of reg­u­lar gas sup­plies and hold him to his promise to re-es­tab­lish the avail­abil­i­ty of reg­u­lar gas to this vi­tal sec­tor.”

For­mer Min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharat said par­ties with whom Petrotrin had fi­nan­cial mat­ters – par­tic­u­lar­ly where is­sues are still pend­ing – would want to know who Pa­tri­ot­ic’s fi­nanciers are and un­til that is known it would ap­pear Gov­ern­ment “gift­ed” OW­TU with the re­fin­ery for elec­tions.

Transparency or Secrecy

24 09 2019

UWI Econ­o­mist Dr Roger Ho­sein told a Ro­tary Club sym­po­sium while he cel­e­brat­ed the planned re­open­ing of the Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery, the deal be­tween the Gov­ern­ment and the OW­TU-owned Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gies and Tech­nolo­gies Ser­vices Lim­it­ed, must be trans­par­ent. The con­tin­ued clo­sure of the re­fin­ery add noth­ing to to the coun­try’s GDP and con­tributes lit­tle to em­ploy­ment.

“If we can bring the re­fin­ery back in­to pro­duc­tive use by whichev­er eco­nom­ic agent takes the re­fin­ery, I am hap­py be­cause it is a pos­i­tive ad­di­tion to the coun­try’s GDP when com­pared to last year No­vem­ber when it was closed.”

How­ev­er, “The deal must be done in a trans­par­ent and fair man­ner for the ben­e­fit of the Trinidad and To­ba­go econ­o­my.”

Yet de­tails of the deal re­main out­side the pub­lic do­main:
“We heard about an up­front pay­ment of US$700 mil­lion and then we heard that a three year mora­to­ri­um will be of­fered on prin­ci­pal on in­ter­est and af­ter three years the com­pa­ny will have a ten year pe­ri­od in which to pay back the prin­ci­pal at a com­pet­i­tive in­ter­est rate. As long as the mech­a­nism by which this was done was fair and trans­par­ent and can hold up to scruti­ny, I am hap­py and com­fort­able.”

Re­open­ing the re­fin­ery will bring back eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty in Mara­bel­la, Gas­par­il­lo and Clax­ton Bay, com­mu­ni­ties which suf­fered be­tween 20 per cent to 40 per cent eco­nom­ic de­cline since the clo­sure of the re­fin­ery.

Asked who were the OW­TU fi­nanciers and where they got US$700 mil­lion to buy the re­fin­ery, Ho­sein said he ex­pects the OW­TU will be able to de­clare those de­tails soon.

“There is a one-month pe­ri­od in which the union has to re­spond to the State of­fer. There are sev­er­al con­di­tion­al­i­ties. The union will have to chance to es­tab­lish fis­cal in­cen­tives, tax breaks and oth­er cri­te­ria that the State has set. The union no longer has to come up with $700 mil­lion up­front. It is be­ing giv­en a three-year mora­to­ri­um with­out in­ter­est and the union can use that US$ 700 mil­lion as­sum­ing one of their for­eign fi­nanciers can sup­ply that re­source and get that re­fin­ery start­ed up and go­ing,” he ex­plained.

Ho­sein said in­ter­est­ing times are ahead and he is look­ing for­ward to hear­ing the de­tails of the deal.

Ho­sein did not think T&T will get a “sweet­heart” bud­get. “If I were to use pre­vi­ous bud­gets as a guide in which av­er­age ex­pen­di­ture was cut from $63 bil­lion to $52 bil­lion, I am not con­vinced that a sweet­heart bud­get will be of­fered,” he said.

He pre­ferred to com­ment on the bud­get af­ter it is pre­sent­ed.

“I would like to cau­tion the State to en­sure that ad­e­quate in­ter­ven­tions are made to re­duce and im­prove the poor rat­ing of the ease of do­ing busi­ness in­dex, in­ject suf­fi­cient cap­i­tal funds to widen the pro­duc­tive base be­cause the un­em­ploy­ment rate has tak­en a bash­ing and we must push the Eteck parks which will crowd the non-en­er­gy ex­port rev­enues in­to the econ­o­my,” he added.

US $1.4 B to fix Petrotrin refinery

22 09 2019

Out­side of the mas­sive US$700 mil­lion up­front pay­ment to the State for the Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery, the new­ly-formed Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gies and Tech­nolo­gies Com­pa­ny Ltd (PET­CL) would have to find at least US$1.4 bil­lion to get the re­fin­ery up and run­ning, says a mem­ber of the val­u­a­tion com­mit­tee that con­sid­ered the bid.

The mem­ber of the team that was set up to eval­u­ate the bids said that there are con­cerns about whether the OW­TU can keep the promis­es con­tained in its pro­pos­als, but that the de­ci­sion was made be­cause its bid was bet­ter than what was of­fered by the two oth­er com­pa­nies.

“There were no mul­ti-na­tion­al com­pa­nies bid­ding on this re­fin­ery. The oth­er fi­nal­ists were some­one who had a re­fin­ery in Ger­many and felt that this could have some syn­er­gies and the oth­er was one in­ter­est­ed in pur­chas­ing the re­fin­ery in Cu­ra­cao and felt there would be a good fit with Pointe-a-Pierre. So we did not have great bids, to be hon­est,” the com­mit­tee mem­ber said.

A for­mer board mem­ber at Petrotrin, who re­quest­ed anonymi­ty, said that the Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery lost US$130 mil­lion a year for the five years be­tween 2013 to 2018 and af­ter its shut­down last year, it will take as much as 12 months to get back on stream.

The for­mer board mem­ber al­so ques­tioned the sta­tus of the un­fin­ished Ul­tra-Low Su­phur Diesel plant.

“It will take an­oth­er US$300 mil­lion to com­plete, is a new com­pa­ny fi­nan­cial­ly pre­pared for that?“

The PET­CL—whol­ly-owned by the Oil­fields Work­ers Trade Union (OW­TU)—was on­ly in­cor­po­rat­ed in De­cem­ber 2018 but earned a top place as the pre­ferred bid­der for the moth­balled re­fin­ery.

Last Oc­to­ber, the OW­TU pre­sent­ed two com­pa­nies—Suri­name-based Sun­stone Eq­ui­ties and MAK Eng­land as part of its con­sor­tium to take over Petrotrin.

Sun­stone Eq­ui­ties joined forces with the OW­TU last year to of­fer a long-term lease to own the Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery.

It is un­clear whether these two com­pa­nies are still part of the cur­rent con­sor­tium and what will hap­pen if the PET­CL is un­able to meet those pre­req­ui­sites.

It is al­so un­clear why, af­ter be­ing named pre­ferred bid­der for the re­fin­ery, the OW­TU was giv­en an­oth­er month to “present to the Eval­u­a­tion Com­mit­tee a sat­is­fac­to­ry and com­pre­hen­sive work plan on how it in­tends to com­plete the process go­ing for­ward.“

The Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert told Par­lia­ment five com­pa­nies were ini­tial­ly short­list­ed, that list was then fur­ther tight­ened and cut down to three, with PET­CL com­ing out on top with its US$700 of­fer.

The PET­CL’s of­fer far sur­passed the fi­nan­cial of­fers made by the oth­er two. Be­owulf En­er­gy sub­mit­ted an arrange­ment to pay the State $US42,000 per month for 15 years and a fu­ture 50/50 prof­it shar­ing af­ter the com­pa­ny re­cov­ered its fi­nan­cial cap­i­tal, while Klesch of­fered noth­ing for the re­fin­ery and the Gov­ern­ment’s on­ly in­come from the re­fin­ery would be through tax­es.

Five short­list­ed:

• Be­owulf En­er­gy
• Glen­core Ltd
• Edge­wood Hold­ings
• Klesch
• Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gies and tech­nolo­gies Com­pa­ny Ltd

Three fi­nal­ists:     Be­owulf En­er­gy    Klesch    PET­CL

10 con­di­tions PET­CL must meet

1. Con­fir­ma­tion of its abil­i­ty to fi­nance the pur­chase and op­er­a­tion of the re­fin­ery.
2. A draft Sales and Pur­chase Agree­ment (SPA) and var­i­ous oth­er Com­mer­cial Agree­ments in­clu­sive of Crude Han­dling, Do­mes­tic Fu­el sup­ply, Nat­ur­al gas sup­ply, Prod­uct Off­take and Tran­si­tion Sup­port.
3. A fi­nalised Busi­ness Plan that ad­dress­es oth­er key de­liv­er­ables in­clu­sive of the pro­vi­sion of a guar­an­teed, re­li­able and seam­less sup­ply of re­fined pe­tro­le­um prod­ucts to T&T and the Caribbean re­gion, en­sur­ing the long-term vi­a­bil­i­ty of the re­fin­ery and re­duc­ing its car­bon foot­print.
4. A state­ment of any fi­nan­cial in­cen­tives or tax con­ces­sions re­quired from the Gov­ern­ment of T&T.
5. An ap­proach to any his­tor­i­cal li­a­bil­i­ties.
6. A re­fin­ery start-up plan which in­volves any nec­es­sary ad­di­tion­al work in­clu­sive of the re­fin­ery re­fur­bish­ment plan and the ter­mi­nal start-up plan.
7. A plan for the sup­ply of pe­tro­le­um prod­ucts dur­ing the tran­si­tion to full op­er­a­tional­i­sa­tion by pa­tri­ot­ic of the re­fin­ery, in­clu­sive of the fi­nal­i­sa­tion of an MoU with Trafigu­ra PTE Ltd.
8. A suit­able staffing plan, in­clu­sive of se­nior man­age­ment.
9. Proof of qual­i­fi­ca­tion to en­gen­der the start­up and per­for­mance en­hance­ment process­es for the new busi­ness as well as the eval­u­a­tion of growth op­por­tu­ni­ties to de­liv­er so­lu­tions that in­te­grate in­for­ma­tion, an­a­lyt­ics and in­sight to solve client chal­lenges at all points along the en­er­gy chain.
10. Ap­proval from the Board of Di­rec­tors of Pa­tri­ot­ic for the de­fin­i­tive terms and con­di­tions of the pro­posed trans­ac­tion.

PET­CL to sign an MOU with Trafigu­ra PTE

As part of the con­di­tion­al­i­ty for the agree­ment, the PET­CL must pro­vide the State with a “plan for the sup­ply of pe­tro­le­um prod­ucts dur­ing the tran­si­tion to full op­er­a­tional­i­sa­tion by Pa­tri­ot­ic of the re­fin­ery, in­clu­sive of the fi­nal­i­sa­tion of an MOU with Trafigu­ra PTE Ltd.“

Ac­cord­ing to the com­pa­nies web­site, T&T is list­ed as a “can­di­date coun­try” since 2014.

The com­pa­ny said it “source, store, blend and de­liv­er phys­i­cal com­modi­ties re­li­ably, ef­fi­cient­ly and re­spon­si­bly any­where in the world. We add val­ue to the glob­al trade in nat­ur­al re­sources with ex­cep­tion­al ser­vice and per­for­mance across the sup­ply chain. We strength­en mar­ket links be­tween pro­duc­ers and end-users and sup­ply our cus­tomers with the com­modi­ties they re­quire when and where they need them“.

Ac­cord­ing to the for­mer board mem­ber, the re­fin­ery pro­duced as much as 140,000 bar­rels per day but on­ly has a ready mar­ket for 25,000 bar­rels. An ad­di­tion­al 25,000 bar­rels is sold up the Caribbean, which leaves as much as 90,000 bar­rels un­used and un­sold.

Agen­da or in­com­pe­tence?

Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan, for­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter, first ap­plaud­ed “any ini­tia­tive that gets the re­fin­ery work­ing,” but ques­tioned whether the re­fin­ery was over­priced.

“The com­pa­ny has to raise its own debt fi­nanc­ing or eq­ui­ty fi­nanc­ing for work­ing cap­i­tal, what would hap­pen now is that the Gov­ern­ment, the peo­ple of T&T would not be get­ting any mon­ey for this as­set un­til three years down the road,” she said.

“I am won­der­ing what oth­er re­al bids they had. Seems to me it was a dis­tressed mar­ket be­cause oth­er re­finer­ies are up for sale and I find US$ 700 mil­lion, I mean if it is go­ing to be re­alised, I mean the Gov­ern­ment got a good deal,” she said.

She won­dered why the Gov­ern­ment chose to shut down the re­fin­ery last year, on­ly to have the new own­er go through nine months to one year try­ing to get it up and run­ning again.

“They have to check every ves­sel, every line, they have to get every­thing re-cer­ti­fied, re-checked,” she said in a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day. “When you shut it down and put it in­to the idle mode, all your pipelines have to be test­ed. That is a cost­ly ex­er­cise by it­self. Be­fore you even start to see­ing a drop of re­fined prod­uct, you’re go­ing to take a min­i­mum of six to nine months.“

The new op­er­a­tors will al­so have to check for any dam­aged, aged and miss­ing parts and com­po­nents be­fore be­gin­ning the process of restart­ing the plant. “That is an ex­er­cise by it­self,” she said.

In 2018 US-based Chevron of­fered to buy out the Brazil­lian-based Petro­bras re­fin­ery for US$350 mil­lion.

“Same com­plex­i­ties as this re­fin­ery and then they start­ed dis­count­ing, dis­count­ing for the state of the re­fin­ery and recom­mis­sion­ing of the re­fin­ery. So US$700 mil­lion is a sur­pris­ing of­fer.”

She said that the Gov­ern­ment made a huge mis­step in shut­ting down the re­fin­ery in the first place be­cause all the pay­outs and loss­es are borne by the tax­pay­ers. “The whole sit­u­a­tion is just a bungling af­ter bungling and there are a lot of ques­tions.”

Seep­er­sad-Bachan al­so ques­tioned whether PET­CL would be able to meet all the con­di­tion­al­i­ties re­quired with­in the one-month time frame.

Petrotrin Parody

Khan coy on funding

Silent on the billion-dollar question of fund­ing for OW­TU to pur­chase Petrotrin’s re­fin­ery- En­er­gy Min­is­ter Franklin Khan spoke about the good news of OW­TU buy­ing the plant, stat­ing that he was pleased with the union’s of­fer.

“It was pro­fes­sion­al­ly put to­geth­er. It was well re­searched and well struc­tured.”

Dur­ing the eval­u­a­tion stages, Khan said there was a lot of talk as to who would get it (re­fin­ery). “But the OW­TU kept their cool….they kept their si­lence be­cause they had signed a non-dis­clo­sure agree­ment and they ho­n­oured it re­li­gious­ly.”

Khan thanked the OW­TU for their be­hav­iour, stat­ing that he would work close­ly with them to start up the re­fin­ery “hope­ful­ly by 2020.” He al­so praised the Prime Min­is­ter for es­tab­lish­ing the com­mit­tee for which the Gov­ern­ment was heav­i­ly crit­i­cised by many who saw it as “po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence.” The PM had in­di­cat­ed that if the OW­TU want­ed the re­fin­ery they must make a bid that could “stand scruti­ny and be eco­nom­i­cal­ly ro­bust.” In­sist­ing that the eval­u­a­tion process had been “trans­par­ent,” Khan said the “proof of the pud­ding is now in the eat­ing”. OW­TU will have full con­trol and man­age­ment of the re­fin­ery. “They have pro­posed a sale of the re­fin­ery. So once that pur­chase agree­ment comes in­to place, bar cer­tain spe­cif­ic parts of the claus­es in terms of the con­ces­sions that Mr Im­bert an­nounced the re­fin­ery will be­long to them.”

PET­CL will sign an MOU, with Trafigu­ra PTE Ltd, the sec­ond-largest in­ter­na­tion­al oil trad­er. “I think they have hooked their wag­on to some­thing very good.”

Khan ad­vised di­recting the ques­tion of fund­ing to the OW­TU.

“They have put a plan for­ward. I don’t want to dis­close that.”

Should the OW­TU run in­to fi­nan­cial prob­lems, Khan said “we will cross that bridge when we come to. But those are ques­tions that are bet­ter put to Pa­tri­ot­ic.”

Voters may see the move as an elec­tion strat­e­gy to win back the votes of the dis­grun­tled trade union move­ment but Khan said the Gov­ern­ment went through due process.

“There is ab­solute­ly no ques­tion that they had the best bid. They were the on­ly peo­ple who had an up­front con­sid­er­a­tion of a whop­ping US$700 mil­lion.”

Khan said the Gov­ern­ment and OW­TU are now part­ners in this ex­er­cise.

“The OW­TU has now got­ten a very strate­gic na­tion­al as­set which we hope they can bring in­to op­er­a­tion in the short­est pos­si­ble time.”

Once the re­fin­ery is back in op­er­a­tion, Khan hoped that the Mara­bel­la, Gas­par­il­lo, Point-a-Pierre and sur­round­ing ar­eas can re-gen­er­ate eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty.

The re­fin­ery has a ca­pac­i­ty of 140,000 bar­rels of oil dai­ly.

OW­TU has been very crit­i­cal of the Gov­ern­ment but Khan said Pa­tri­otric was a pri­vate com­pa­ny and was not nec­es­sar­i­ly the OW­TU.

“Ob­vi­ous­ly, the com­pa­ny will have its fi­nanciers, in­vestors and in­vest­ment bank. Why should we stay away from us­ing Pa­tri­ot­ic and the OW­TU in­ter­change­ably?”

Khan curbs commentary

25 09 2019

To combat disinformation, Min­is­ter of En­er­gy Franklin Khan warned cit­i­zens to  consider comments about the de­ci­sion to se­lect Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gies and Tech­nolo­gies Ltd (PET­CL) as the pre­ferred bid­der for the sale of Petrotrin’s re­fin­ery.

At the open­ing of the NP El So­cor­ro Ser­vice Sta­tion and Quik­Shoppe Plus, Khan urged cit­i­zens to be cir­cum­spect in their opinion about Cab­i­net’s de­ci­sion to se­lect PET­CL, which is whol­ly owned by the Oil­field Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU), as the pre­ferred bid­der for the US$700 mil­lion sale of the re­fin­ery.

He said the re­fin­ery was sad­dled with a debt to the tune of al­most $13 bil­lion. “US$850 of which had to be paid off in cash by Au­gust of this year. It be­came an un­sus­tain­able busi­ness as it was present­ly struc­tured.”

As such the Gov­ern­ment took the “bold step” to re­struc­ture Petrotrin, he said.

“We moth­balled the re­fin­ery for a short pe­ri­od put it out for an in­ter­na­tion­al bid and you know what is hap­pen­ing now,” he said.

Pa­tri­ot­ic was se­lect­ed af­ter a prop­er process.

“I just want to go on record to re­it­er­ate the gov­ern­ment’s po­si­tion, it was an in­ter­na­tion­al call for re­quest for pro­pos­als, it was eval­u­at­ed by a mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary high-lev­el team, it boiled down to three com­pa­nies with bind­ing bids and Pa­tri­ot­ic through a trans­par­ent process has been de­ter­mined to be the pre­ferred bid­der/ We did not give away any­thing, we didn’t favour any­body. And all the naysay­ers want to find out how they rais­ing the mon­ey, where they get­ting this, where they get­ting that. I just want to cau­tion the pub­lic it is a process let us take our time, we have moved now in­to the realm of high-lev­el in­ter­na­tion­al fi­nanc­ing and these loose state­ments in the gen­er­al pub­lic is a detri­ment to the process. So I don’t want to say more on that, it is a process that is on­go­ing but you can­not as pa­tri­ot­ic cit­i­zens of Trinidad try to stymy the process, they have been de­clared the pre­ferred bid­der, the re­fin­ery has not been giv­en to them, it is a process now that will con­tin­ue in the next four to six weeks where the firm de­tailed pro­pos­al will be fi­nalised and I say no more on that and I urge the pop­u­la­tion to say not much as they process con­tin­ues be­cause it is to every­body’s ben­e­fit that the re­fin­ery restarts.”

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert told Par­lia­ment that Cab­i­net agreed to se­lect Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gies and Tech­nolo­gies Com­pa­ny Ltd (PET­CL)—a com­pa­ny whol­ly owned by the Oil­field Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU)—as the pre­ferred bid­der for the US$700 mil­lion sale of Petrotrin’s re­fin­ery. En­er­gy Min­is­ter Franklin Khan denied that the move by Gov­ern­ment is a 2020 gen­er­al elec­tion strat­e­gy to win back the vote of the trade union move­ment.

Im­bert said fol­low­ing Petrotrin’s clo­sure last year, the Gov­ern­ment had in­di­cat­ed its in­ten­tion to of­fer for sale or lease of the re­fin­ery and as­so­ci­at­ed fu­el trad­ing fa­cil­i­ties through two stages. The first stage at­tract­ed 77 ex­pres­sions of in­ter­ests.

Of the 77 po­ten­tial bid­ders, 25 were elect­ed to sign non-dis­clo­sure agree­ments which were nar­rowed down to eight sub­mit­ting non-bind­ing of­fers. Af­ter an eval­u­a­tion, a short­list of five bid­ders were iden­ti­fied-Be­owulf En­er­gy, Glen­core Ltd, Edge­wood Hold­ings, Klesh and PET­CL.

Im­bert stat­ed that in June, Cab­i­net agreed to the ap­point­ment of an eval­u­a­tion com­mit­tee chaired by Vish­nu Dhan­paul to make a rec­om­men­da­tion on a se­lect pre­ferred bid­der, ne­go­ti­ate and fi­nalise a bind­ing of­fer, ne­go­ti­ate and ex­e­cute a de­fin­i­tive agree­ment (lease of sale), ini­ti­ate ne­go­ti­a­tions of crit­i­cal com­mer­cial agree­ments and ne­go­ti­ate any Gov­ern­ment in­cen­tive.

At the close of bids on Au­gust 20, Be­owulf En­er­gy, Klesh and PET­CL sub­mit­ted com­pli­ant bind­ing of­fers for the pur­chase or lease of the re­fin­ery. The com­mit­tee re­viewed the three pro­pos­als on 12 cri­te­ria which in­clud­ed up­front con­sid­er­a­tion, his­to­ry of re­fin­ing, fi­nan­cial ca­pa­bil­i­ty and union in­volve­ment among oth­ers.

PET­CL was the on­ly bid­der that pro­posed “up­front cash of US$700 mil­lion for the re­fin­ery as­sets plus US$300 mil­lion for the non-core as­sets of lega­cy Petrotrin, for in­stance, the hos­pi­tal.”

How­ev­er, Im­bert point­ed out that Petrotrin’s core as­sets were not of­fered for sale by the Gov­ern­ment.

Be­owulf of­fered no up­front con­sid­er­a­tion but in­stead pro­posed a lease pay­ment of US$42,000 per month over a 15-year ini­tial term and a 50/50 prof­it-shar­ing con­tin­gent.

Klesh pro­posed that the on­ly pay­ment to the Gov­ern­ment would be through tax­es.

PET­CL which has as its sole share­hold­ers the OW­TU al­so pro­posed the in­tro­duc­tion of staff in­cen­tives through a per­for­mance-based frame­work, gave a com­mit­ment to im­prov­ing the work cul­ture and in­di­cat­ed its in­ten­tion to se­cure an eq­ui­ty and debt provider.

Af­ter re­view­ing the facts, Im­bert said, “Cab­i­net agreed to se­lect Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gies and Tech­nolo­gies Com­pa­ny Ltd, a com­pa­ny whol­ly owned by the OW­TU, as the pre­ferred bid­der for the sale of the Guaracara Re­fin­ing Com­pa­ny Ltd and Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny Ltd on terms.”

Those terms in­clude that PET­CL be giv­en one month to present to the com­mit­tee a sat­is­fac­to­ry and com­pre­hen­sive work plan, among them, how they in­tend to com­plete the process in go­ing for­ward, con­fir­ma­tion of its abil­i­ty to fi­nance the pur­chase and op­er­a­tion of the re­fin­ery, a draft sales pur­chase agree­ment, a fi­nalised busi­ness plan, a state­ment of any fis­cal in­cen­tives or tax con­ces­sions re­quired from the Gov­ern­ment and a re­fin­ery start-up plan.

PET­CL would al­so “be grant­ed a three-year mora­to­ri­um on all pay­ments of prin­ci­pal on in­ter­est to­ward the pur­chase of the re­fin­ery and a fur­ther ten years, at a fair mar­ket in­ter­est rate, to com­plete the pay­ment of the sum of US $700 mil­lion it has of­fered for the re­fin­ery.”

The com­mit­tee has been man­dat­ed to sub­mit its find­ings and rec­om­men­da­tions to Cab­i­net in six weeks.

Piparo mud volcano

 

NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCIES ON THE GROUND

Following reports of increased geological activity at the Piparo Mud Volcano, National Security agencies have been monitoring the situation and are currently working with key stakeholders to observe ongoing activity at the site.

The Office of Disaster Preparedness and Management (ODPM) has been in consultation with the Disaster Management Units of the Ministry of Rural Development and Local Government and with Mr. Xavier Moonan, Senior Geoscientist at Touchstone Exploration who conducted numerous tests at the site and drone surveys to produce a 3D map of the area. Residents have also been consulted on the increased activity. Families were evacuated in 1997.

Cracks on Piparo Main Road caused damage to homes. The scent of sulphur was noted. To maintain public safety and security, officers from the Princes Town Fire Station, Police Service (TTPS) and Municipal Police cordoned off the area to prevent the public entering. The area is now closed to vehicular and pedestrian traffic. The TTPS increased patrols in the area.

The Ministry of National Security is advising citizens, visitors and Piparo residents to keep away from the area surrounding the mud volcano and to refrain from compromising their personal safety as it is currently deemed an active zone.

The ODPM, TTPS, Trinidad and Tobago Fire Service (TTFS), Princes Town Regional Corporation, Couva/Tabaquite/Talparo Regional Corporation, Environmental Management Authority (EMA) and Geological Society of Trinidad and Tobago (GSTT) are closely observing the site to ensure the safety and security of residents and citizens. A meeting is scheduled between all key stakeholders to further coordinate mitigation and response activities.

UWI lec­tur­er, Xavier Moo­nan, asked vil­lagers to con­tin­ue to be vig­i­lant.

“These .. ex­pres­sions are what ac­tu­al­ly ties very well to the erup­tion .. in 1997. There was a lull pe­ri­od of about three weeks and so .. we are pay­ing at­ten­tion to this time pe­ri­od to see if this is con­tin­u­ing to match that. The most we can do with­out any fur­ther sci­en­tif­ic da­ta is just to see if it con­tin­ues to match that and then we will know whether we are ex­pect­ing a ma­jor erup­tion or if it is go­ing to go back to slum­ber again.”

Old cracks on the ground were wider, there were new cracks and “a fair amount of gas” was bub­bling from the main vent and small­er vents and new cones. Moo­nan was part of a team from the Uni­ver­si­ty of West In­dies De­part­ment of Pe­tro­le­um Geo­science that con­duct­ed a seis­mic to­mog­ra­phy 2D sur­vey at the vol­cano site.

Up­dat­ed and so­phis­ti­cat­ed equip­ment is need­ed to mon­i­tor the vol­cano more ac­cu­rate­ly and ef­fi­cient­ly. He re­called that they made a pro­pos­al for new equip­ment to Gov­ern­ment af­ter the mud vol­cano at the Dev­il’s Wood­yard in New Grant erupt­ed last year.

He said, “.. we are try­ing to get wire­less tilt­meters.”

Once in­stalled on the site, those me­ters will be able to broad­cast to them no mat­ter where they are in the coun­try re­al time in­for­ma­tion from the vol­cano.

There were al­so much bet­ter ver­sions of the equip­ment they cur­rent­ly use at UWI which will al­low them to cap­ture date much faster. The vol­cano site will first have to be prop­er­ly se­cured and mon­i­tored to pre­vent the equip­ment from be­ing van­dalised.

Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny al­so con­duct­ed tests and de­ter­mined that the sul­phur scents were not con­cen­trat­ed enough to be harm­ful to the res­i­dents.

He said the da­ta from the sur­vey will be com­pared to pre­vi­ous da­ta cap­tured pe­ri­od­i­cal­ly over the past few years to de­ter­mine the lev­el of un­der­ground ac­tiv­i­ty tak­ing place. The re­sults are ex­pect­ed with­in 24 hours. Even if the vol­cano erupts, the mud flow is not ex­pect­ed to go be­yond the pre­vi­ous area that was cov­ered. While res­i­dents’ hous­es may not be cov­ered with mud, hous­es will like­ly sus­tain struc­tur­al dam­age.

An equipment grant should be urgently awarded to UWI by the Ministry of Planning and Development which received 27 Million Euro approx. TTD $300 Million dollars for Tertiary Education in June.

Epic annual floods

As delegates at UNGA Climate Summit on Sep 23 2019 blamed fossil fuels for failures due to poor governance, tropical storm Karen caused wide­spread flood­ing across Trinidad & Tobago. authorities fail­ed to pro­vide meals and mat­tress­es to over 800 res­i­dents in Val­sayn where 70% of the village was under water .

Homes in Bam­boo Set­tle­ments 1, 2 and 3 were inundated when the St Joseph Riv­er over­flowed its bank. Op­po­si­tion MP Prakash Ra­mad­har called on the State to re­spond to the plight of his con­stituents and oth­ers and “not just de­liv­er cos­met­ic com­fort” dur­ing a nat­ur­al dis­as­ter. He re­mained with the vil­lagers who were self-help­ing. Had it not been for Sub­way and Pres­tige Hold­ings, who pro­vid­ed lunch­es, res­i­dents would have re­mained hun­gry.

The Op­po­si­tion MP for St Au­gus­tine including the University of the West Indies and Piarco Airport said no clean­ing agents had been pro­vid­ed by the State to sani­tise homes filled with two feet of wa­ter. His of­fice got no pos­i­tive re­spons­es to calls to state agen­cies since the wa­ter started ris­ing. With the ex­cep­tion of the pro­tec­tive ser­vices, “in terms of the pro­vi­sion of any ma­te­ri­als, un­for­tu­nate­ly, we have not had that.” First re­spon­ders from the Tu­na­puna Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion had not even pro­vid­ed mat­tress­es to the res­i­dents.

We should have a bet­ter-struc­tured ap­proach. For too long we have been re­ly­ing on the char­i­ty of cit­i­zens but there will come a time when that will even be so strained and the need so great that they would not be able to meet it.”

The MP ap­pealed to cit­i­zens to make do­na­tions or as­sist those in need in what­ev­er way they can.

Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Kaz­im Ho­sein promised to help.

A busi­ness­man do­nat­ed sand­wich­es. In Bam­boo No 3, Ra­mad­har es­ti­mat­ed 800 res­i­dents were af­fect­ed. “There are oth­ers who were al­so hit by the wa­ter, so the fig­ures could be far more.” .The Kalpoo broth­ers and res­i­dents who had boats were y car­ry­ing sup­plies.

WASA charged farm­ers ear­li­er for si­phon­ing wa­ter out of rivers for their crops. Dur­ing a brief tour of Bam­boo Set­tle­ment , Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan said the flood­ing was caused by a breach in the San Juan Riv­er. He said to get the wa­ter out, an in­dus­tri­al pump has been push­ing 15,000 gal­lons of wa­ter out of Bam­boo Set­tle­ment in­to the Ca­roni Riv­er “every minute.”

Last year’s floods af­fect­ed 250,000 peo­ple with the same lev­el of rain­fall, he said, adding that Sun­day’s floods had af­fect­ed few­er peo­ple. After ODPM refused aid in flagrant and cynical disregard for residents’ rights. ECO donated 3 dinghies. In April 2019 the US Embassy donated 4 lifeboats to rescue victims in the Tunapuna-Piarco region.

“And to­day, one day af­ter that down­pour, the ma­jor­i­ty of Trinida­di­ans’ lives would have gone back to nor­mal. Our rivers were able to con­tain the wa­ter . . . give or take three of four rivers at the low­est point would have top­pled banks,” he said.

Ramadhar questioned plans by the Works Minister to replace all the country’s anti-flood diesel water pumps with electric pumps.

At his constituency office Ramadhar responded to the disclosure and addressed flooding caused by Storm Karen.

“In a true disaster we might not have any electricity,” Ramadhar said, in support of retaining the existing system of diesel pumps.

Many of his constituents felt hurt by remarks of ministers that people should not have built in flood-prone “ponds.”

Since the dawn of mankind, people have lived along rivers such as the Ganges and the Nile. Many residents of Bamboo No3 may not wish to live there but did so because it was an old settlement.

“People had agricultural lands and had to live close to their crops and livestock.”

Bamboo No3 was under the control of the Housing Development Corporation (HDC).

“It is wrong to say it is the victims to blame. I say to the Government deal with those who block our waterways. It is up to the State, before the rainy season, to ensure our rivers are clear. The reality of climate change is upon us.”

Ramadhar asked what sum, if any, would be allocated in the budget for the re-direction of watercourses. “Do something different!”

River banks must be raised and strengthened. “Is there any programme or plan to redirect the floods into our reservoirs? Is there any plan to create new reservoirs and catchment areas, so we would mitigate the floods we now have?

“In the height of the rainy season, we are told we are under water control, and they are putting restrictions we are all obliged to follow. So what happens in the dry season? What are the plans that we have? Any?”

He lamented recent flood damage suffered by his constituents, including a small baby whose parents could find no dry cloth on which to lay its head. “That’s the reality. Schoolbooks were washed away.”

50 victims of last year’s flooding in his constituency had not yet received compensation from the government. Saying part of the Bamboo, south of Grand Bazaar, had flooded on September 20 for the first time ever, he blamed a lack of cleaning of waterways. He urged, “Let us be very proactive.”

Noting the irony of an Aranguez farmer facing penalties for extracting river water last dry season, he said the State must instead try to work with such people who were trying to earn a livelihood and to feed the nation. Regarding illicit dumping as a cause of flooding, he urged the Government to systematically provide dumpsters to communities across TT.

He hoped the authorities would curb the act of someone who was compacting the soil of a riverbank at Mohan Trace in Bamboo No2, saying villagers were very worried about it. Ramadhar observed that “a once every 500 years” flood is now striking TT virtually every year. He underlined his call for proactive steps against future hazards by remarking that recent flood woes were due only to feeder bands of weather from Karen, which had not in fact directly hit TT.

One farmer lost 500 chickens, 50 ducks and 12 piglets.

Water,water everywhere...

At the height of the rainy season, Hollis Reservoir in Valencia, the chief source of water for hundreds of thousands in communities throughout North East and Eastern Trinidad is experiencing a major shortfall of 700 million gallons which CEO of the Water and Sewerage Authority Alan Poon King described as “uncomfortably low” especially at this time of the rainy season.

Visiting the reservoir as torrential rainfall drenched West Trinidad and Port of Spain, causing flash flooding, he said this reservoir with a capacity of one billion gallons, is now down to a mere 300 million gallons, an unusual scenario compared to previous years.

There are four main reservoirs with Hollis the oldest. Next is Arena which supports the Caroni/Arena water treatment plant, Navet in central Trinidad which supplies south-east Trinidad and Hillsborough in Tobago.

Hollis and Navet remain areas of concern for WASA. With showers earlier in the week being welcome news for Hollis, Poon King warned that the reservoir’s water level is so low that whatever rainfall was collected this week will be used up by human consumption and evaporation caused by extremely hot weather conditions.

He cautioned the nation that water conservation is absolutely vital if WASA is to manage its already low reserves with the 2020 dry season a few months away. “We are at 45 to 50 per cent at this plant which has a capacity of 8.4 million gallons per day (mgd). We are currently putting out about four mgd. Navet, which operates at 20 mgd, is doing ten mgd, and Caroni which is supported by Arena, is fluctuating between 60-70 mgd compared to the average of 75 mgd. Overall, our production has been fluctuating between 200 and 210 mgd compared to 242 mgd. So we have a shortfall that would vary between 20 and 30 mgd. A such, the water schedules we have put in place will remain in force and water use restrictions also remain in force.”

WASA is having more wells sourced to have ground water available. The desalination sources of water are more resilient in the dry season, but there will be a significant shut down at the Desalcott plant in Pt Lisas in a couple of weeks, which will further impact on the current water availability scenario. He urged customers to pay their water bills, since water management, water treatment and water distribution cannot be done free of charge.

“We want to ensure people pay their bills as we need the funds to treat and distribute the water. We ask people to work with the Authority so that all can benefit.”

Rates are already low when compared to rates in other Caribbean countries yet because people are lax in paying their bills, the company has racked up debt in the hundreds of millions of dollars. “The message is you need to do your part. The rates equate to just about the maximum that you can pay for a residential property, about $3 per day. WASA has a responsibility, but customers have a responsibility as well.” As an authority regulated by the Regulated Industries Commission, customers are given two billing periods grace.