Is refinery closure right move?

NEIL GOSINE

I FIND IT astounding that the Government could approve the closure of Petrotrin as this will surely have a domino effect across the country, not to mention putting thousands of families on the breadline, as well as hundreds of contractors and service companies that all depend on work from Petrotrin.

Don’t get me wrong, I do not hold to the point of view that the OWTU is always right. In fact, I have had my fair share of run-ins with the union’s president general, Ancel Roget, during my term on the board of National Petroleum Marketing Company (NP) from 2010 to 2015.

One particular difficult impasse was in October 2013 where the board of NP had no choice but to fire 68 workers for walking off the job without proper industrial notice. At the time of the walkout and work stoppage, the OWTU cited privatisation as the reason.

Ironically, it’s the same accusation from the union about this Government for its proposed closure of the Petrotrin refinery, although this time the accusation may prove valid. Only time will tell.

However, at that time the board had to take the difficult decision to fire the workers for walking off the job, as the two years previous to that incident the union had shut down NP more than 20 times and every time it did this it cost the company approximately $9.5 million a day.

As soon as that board’s term expired and the new board came in, it promptly decided to rehire all 68 workers, costing the company millions in back pay. Whether that was the right decision or not is not for me to say.

However, we now find ourselves in this predicament where the Government has approved the closure of the Petrotrin refinery and one has to ask if the OWTU didn’t bring this on itself. For the OWTU does not ease up, even to the detriment of the company’s financial stability in the wake of continued issues of reliability of the refinery’s operations and constant strikes to use as leverage for higher wages. This has contributed to it being very uncompetitive, as Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley most decisively elaborated in his speech on Sunday.

With that said, a very important and critical issue is the way the closure was communicated to the union and the population at large. The Government must know that its decision will have far-reaching consequences for the economy and the companies and citizens that depend on the refinery for their livelihoods.

The problem is not just 2,500 permanent workers and 1,500 temporary and casual workers but hundreds of small service companies and many more thousands of people. To say it’s just 4,000 workers approximately is disingenuous. Everyone knows there is much more to that number than the Government is portraying.

There are many businesses, shops, restaurants, stores, and even doubles vendors that depend on the refinery and its patronage for their businesses and livelihood.

In my mind there are several other scenarios that could have been used instead of the closure. In fact, one may be that NP should have been allowed to import fuels and distribute throughout its network. And whatever happened to NP’s multi-fuel pipeline gantry in Caroni? That facility was supposed to be state-of-the-art to distribute fuel nationwide from that location. Why isn’t it operational yet? Millions were spent on this as well.

There seems to be no proper plan in the Government’s decision to shut down the refinery, and the offer for the union to own and operate a new company of the refinery’s assets reeks of an underhanded move to show in the future why it had to do what it has set out to do, that is, shut down and sell off parts of the refinery. Roget has already indicated the union is not interested in running the refinery part of the business.

I’m asking that good sense prevails and that the Government at least hears out the union, the affected citizens, businesses and people of the southland on its restructuring plan, as it does not seem that the closure plan was well thought-out.

Also, that all alternative scenarios are examined properly, even at the parliamentary level, with independent senators or the Opposition given a fair chance to debate this closure idea throughly.

There are so many unanswered questions – the World GTL plant, the desulfurisation plant and many, many more. Let us get this properly debated and see if a better way exists for the future of Petrotrin, please.

Neil Gosine is a former chairman of the National Petroleum Marketing Company

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Neil Gosine