00:00During the opposition UNC's media conference on Sunday, Point of Peer MP David Lee had
00:06a lot to say about one of the legacy aspects of Petrotrin, the state-owned oil company
00:11which the government restructured into Trinidad Petroleum Holdings Limited some six years
00:17ago.
00:18What is happening with the pension fund of the retirees of Petrotrin, those retirees?
00:26I understand September, a few days last week, that for the first time their pension payments
00:36they received it late, for the first time and a lot of them got scared.
00:41A lot of them got worried because never before that their pension payments were ever late.
00:49One of the UNC's campaign promises has been that it will reopen the state-owned oil refinery
00:54in Point of Peer, which was closed in late 2018.
00:58In response to a question posed during the opposition's media conference, MP Lee also
01:04had a lot to say when he distanced the UNC from the oilfields workers' trade union-owned
01:11patriotic company's second unsuccessful bid to restart the refinery under the present
01:17PNM administration.
01:20That is a matter between patriotic technologies and the evaluation committee and even Minister
01:26Young, who seems to have gotten that information in his mailbox that he said in his contribution
01:33on Friday.
01:35So I will leave it there.
01:36We have nothing to do with that deal.
01:39We don't know anything about that deal.
01:42Energy Minister Stuart Young said on Saturday that due diligence confirmed what he said
01:46in Parliament on Friday, that patriotic produced a fake document purporting to be a wire transfer
01:52to a local bank of U.S. $1.5 billion.
01:58Patriotic said that they remain confident that their preferred financier can stand the
02:02scrutiny of any due diligence process.
02:05We don't know anything about that deal or any of the bids that was put in by any of
02:12the companies that would have sought to try and buy the refinery.
02:16So we leave it between patriotic and the government to sort that out.
02:21Earlier in the media conference, MP Lee spoke about the government's approach to dealing
02:25with the shortfall in the supply of natural gas, as he referred it to a statement made
02:30by Prime Minister Dr. Keith Rowley on September 27.
02:34Dr. Rowley spoke about progress with the deals from the supply of natural gas from Venezuela.
02:40However, the Prime Minister urged the population to hold the fort as he expressed confidence
02:45the nation will be in a better position in 2027.
02:50When the opposition used to be telling them, do not put all your eggs in that cross-border
02:56arrangement that you are trying to work out with Venezuela.
02:59That is fine, but do not put, while you're doing that, ensure that your home in our waters
03:05are well oiled, no pun intended, and the drilling continues to find oil and gas.
03:12The reports are there that we have it in our territorial waters.
03:17The government has insisted it has not put all of its eggs in the cross-border gas basket
03:23and has been working on encouraging the upstream companies,
03:26such as BP and Shell, to increase local natural gas production.
03:31Jule Brown, TV6 News.
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