Tag Archives: Petrotrin refinery

I drove past the Petrotrin refinery one night and felt the stillness that darkness provides. In my imagination, I saw the stare of thousands of eyes from the darkness. It is now six months since Petrotrin chairman Wilfred Espinet wielded his axe, with the full permission of the current government, …

The Privy Council decision in Maharaj v Petroleum Company of Trinidad and Tobago Ltd, [2019] UKPC 21 (20 May 2019) has shone a Guaracara-esque spotlight onto Petrotrin’s decision to abandon its $97 million USD claim against Malcolm Jones. According to the Court, based on the evidence available to them, ‘there …

Last week predictably began with more turbulence over the aftermath of the Petrotrin shut down and over one of the successor companies, Paria Fuel Trading Company Limited. Our governments have had marked communications deficits because there is too much attempted secrecy over the process attendant upon deals constantly being made …

What the hell? Can one set out to sell a State asset by mistake? ‘Wth’ is a milder version of the social media acronym used to express surprise or disgust. It was my response to the Minister of Energy’s implausible media release on Monday last related to the failure of …

This column was one of the first among regular commentaries to identify that Government slackness was embracing criminality, and to make dire predictions about where this would lead. The assertion was met with dismay on the cocktail circuit. A well regarded commentator suggested to me that our governments were ‘mooks’ …

Good day, former Petrotrin worker. Today marks the end of life as you knew it for the past whatever number of years you worked proudly for Petrotrin. Today, you awake with an emptiness deep in your soul and a lack of clarity about your future. You are not even assured that …

The Thema Williams judgment sits as one more example of corruption among those entrusted to dispassionately look after our best national interests. Brick by brick we dismantle the foundations of trust, essential to the proper functioning of our society. From 2009, when the first local polls tracked the public confidence …

“I have mixed feelings. Anger, anxiety, disbelief, and acceptance take turns alternating in my mind. Nostalgia. “[…] I remember my first day as a trainee […] being yelled at in front of the entire shop by an older man in my first year, ‘Allyuh ‘oman only trying to take man …

Two weeks ago, I asserted that the proposed closure of the Petrotrin refinery was a socio-economic earthquake attributable to the State enterprise fault line that runs right through our economy. That earthquake has produced its tsunami. It is a tsunami of grief. The question is this: Do we understand that …

“This notion that ‘we have oil’ is a gross misrepresentation of what it cost to get a bbl of oil out of the ground to the point of sale—not to mention that the price you see quoted via international media is not what our oil sells for…” The following Letter …

I’m a “glass half-full” kind of person, which is why I see the Petrotrin closure as an opportunity for inspired leadership on one hand, and the transformation of our people on the other. Leadership and transformation both require a willingness to change the way we see things. The behaviourists talk …

“So the logical question is: why don’t our governments fix the state enterprise governance system? The answer is partly because it sustains political patronage and corruption, partly because it buys off the trade unions, and partly because of inertia—fixing things that don’t appear to be broken simply isn’t worth the …