$80,000 a month overtime scam

Energy Minister Franklin Khan has given a broad hint that the Petrotrin refinery will be re-opened under foreign hands and he predicted that many of the workers who have been retrenched will be working there when this happens, only more efficiently.

He spoke about a scheme by workers which the company was duped in having to pay costly overtime. In dealing with some of the factors which led to the decision to close the refinery he said they looked at the consolidated account of Petrotrin and this showed they would lose some $40 billion per annum.

“The Guaracara refinery and facilities are likely to be leased to an international operator because there is no indigenous capacity to run a refinery of that size and complexity,” Khan said during the “Let’s talk energy” forum in put on by the PNM in Point Fortin on Thursday evening.

Khan dealt at length on what it cost the State to operate the refinery, revealing at one point a scheme by workers which cost the company some $80,000 in overtime monthly.

“The workers had a strategy where their colleagues will call in sick allowing their friends to work overtime and collect huge salaries,” Khan disclosed, saying this existed even as Petrotrin had an agreement with the OWTU that even though contracts were awarded, they must go with the union rates. The union’s rate for a labourer was $700 a day and we have workers who work for less than $100. Contractors were demanding money, but it did not go to the workers, he said.

The PNM, he said, made the decision to stay in production with new capital investment and new technology and to get out of refinery. The refinery he said is now up for lease and the government is now evaluating the bids and, in a few months, they will announce the successful bidder.

“A new operation will be here in TT,” Khan said. “They will employ a significant part of the very staff that worked at the refinery.”

The minister said those (workers) who got an attractive severance package will now be employed and they will become more efficient. The new operator, he said will provide a source for crude, so we will not have to put out a lot to buy 100,000 barrels. Petrotrin is owing the state $3 billion in taxes and royalties. He said one of the contributing factors is the oilfields were very old, founded by Shell in the 1920s and 1930s.

“We ended up running a refinery doing 150,000 barrels per day with only 40,000 indigenous supply which means the government had to import 100,000 barrels of crude and this is what takes the cake. Every barrel refined at Pointe-a-Pierre we were losing US$5 to US$7 per day on the market and that was a hopeless case.