T&T union signed airtight non-disclosure agreement on Petrotrin deal

(Trinidad Guardian) An air­tight non-dis­clo­sure agree­ment (NDA) is keep­ing Oil­field Work­ers Trade Union (OW­TU) pres­i­dent Gen­er­al An­cel Ro­get from nam­ing his in­ter­na­tion­al in­vestors on the takeover of the Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery.

The OW­TU whol­ly owns the Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gies and Tech­nolo­gies Com­pa­ny Ltd (PET­CL) which was se­lect­ed as the pre­ferred bid­der for the re­fin­ery.

Ro­get and the con­sor­tium must meet a strict ten-part con­di­tion­al­i­ty with­in a 30-day pe­ri­od be­fore the re­fin­ery is hand­ed over.

“We are ready,” he said in a brief tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day.

“I can­not com­ment on the in­vestors un­til I am ad­vised by our lawyers.”

But while he re­mained mum on that as­pect of the deal, he was quite vo­cal on oth­er parts of it.

“There will be no nepo­tism, no po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence in the run­ning of the re­fin­ery this time,” he said.

He said that the of­fer to the union does not change his sen­ti­ment to­ward the Gov­ern­ment.

“Of course, it does not. That is be­cause this is not some gift, some largesse from the Gov­ern­ment. We worked very hard for this deal, we prayed, we marched, we fast­ed.”

He said too that the work­ers re­hired to work at the re­fin­ery would be rep­re­sent­ed by the OW­TU.

“The OW­TU, even as a union, is an em­ploy­er al­ready,” he said.

While in good spir­its over the deal, Ro­get took the time to blast Op­po­si­tion leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar for her com­ments af­ter Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert an­nounced that PET­CL was se­lect­ed as the pre­ferred bid­der.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar was ques­tion­ing the fi­nan­cial stand­ing of the PET­CL, which was in­cor­po­rat­ed less than a year ago. She al­so ques­tioned why the Gov­ern­ment chose to “give away” a mul­ti-bil­lion dol­lar as­set with­out due dili­gence.

“I have tak­en care­ful note of what the Op­po­si­tion Leader said and the is­sues she raised,” he said.

“It seems as if she did not want the OW­TU to get the re­fin­ery. But I will be deal­ing with that in the full­ness of time,” he said.

In Oc­to­ber Ro­get pre­sent­ed two com­pa­nies, Suri­name-based in­vest­ment bank Sun­Stone Eq­ui­ty and MAK Eng­land LLC, a com­modi­ties trad­er with of­fices in the UK, US and Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates.

It is un­clear if these two bod­ies are still part of the PET­CL con­sor­tium of in­vestors.

Ro­get, at that time, shared the com­pa­ny’s pro­pos­al which fo­cused on ac­quir­ing the re­fin­ery and the oth­er parts of the op­er­a­tions, like the Au­gus­tus Long Hos­pi­tal.

The Gov­ern­ment, how­ev­er, made it clear that on­ly the re­fin­ery was for sale.