THE EDITOR: The Prime Minister’s praise for Heritage Petroleum gives away the misreporting about the Pointe-a-Pierre refinery.
The same success Heritage has made of it could have been worked through with the original upgraded “Petrotrin” plants and their more diversified product categories and niches.
In the process of moving out to “greener pastures without the unions,” these latter were ruined along with labour. It’s no use saying there was a bullet payment that killed everything, since the Government had to meet commitments anyway. Not to mention the skeletalisation of skilled crews.
But this is not the crux of the matter. The core of it is the allocation of the natural resources outside the nation’s own control. Not only is Heritage confined to this paradigm, but the whole of Point Lisas too is locked into its vagaries; and the predicted negative results are coming to pass.
Heritage is staging some profits but what kind of benchmark is that compared to the retention by the nation of the energy-based resources/resources bases – connecting into the full-fledged functioning of (a) the multi-faceted (former) refinery (that had been upgraded and paid for to be recouped) plus (b) all Point Lisas lines in all its sectors?
Obviously in that scenario the labour question could be answered with distinction and flying colours. Instead you would give away the fields of extraction so what use you had left for labour and “Petrotrin” was to make them the perennial whipping boys. No money on the table with that.
This is what the PNM continues to enunciate. It’s sad to say this Government cannot move beyond it. In addition, the new controllers of the natural resources have every intention to maintain a firm grip on what they’ve been given and the PNM cannot stand up to them anymore. Leaving the nation dependent on Dragon gas and NOC fundamentalism. The least the Government and the PNM could do at this point is stop its spitefulness.
E GALY
via e-mail
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