In Brief
Refinery restart stalled: Energy Minister Dr Roodal Moonilal says procurement regulations are hampering efforts to restart the Pointe-a-Pierre refinery.
OPR blamed: Moonilal told Parliament the Office of Procurement Regulation (OPR) has been the biggest obstacle, comparing its processes to ‘an administrative Duckworth/Lewis system.’
Jobs and investment at stake: He said 5,000 jobs could already have been created had the refinery restarted, warning that continued delays risk deterring investors.
Bill aims to ease process: The Public Procurement and Disposal of Public Property (Amendment) Bill, 2026, is intended to simplify procurement rules, particularly for small and micro contractors.
Support from state agencies: Moonilal cited submissions from Heritage Petroleum, Paria Fuel Trading Company and other state bodies backing the proposed changes.
By Prior Beharry
Procurement regulations are hampering the restart of the Pointe-a-Pierre refinery, Energy Minister Dr Roodal Moonilal has said.
He made the comments during debate on the Public Procurement and Disposal of Public Property (Amendment) Bill, 2026, in the Lower House on Wednesday.
“Enough is enough! … We won’t be able to attract investors if we stay too long to restart the refinery,” Moonilal said.
He said the objective of the bill was to free up the economic and industrial systems so that small and micro contractors could participate.
“We have been preoccupied 24 hours a day with this matter of the refinery restart. The biggest issue that constrains us and makes us move in a very slow manner is the Office of Procurement Regulation (OPR),” he said.
“We could have restarted the refinery already, 5,000 people could have had jobs now while I’m speaking,” he said, before invoking a cricket analogy. “But every time we — this OPR is really an administrative Duckworth/Lewis system. Every time you make a move they say, ‘Check again the scientific formula.'”
Moonilal said that whenever the ministry attempted to take action on the refinery, it was told there was an OPR regulation preventing it.
“If we make a move again on the refinery to do something, it’s, ‘Hold on, you can’t go there.’ Every day I ask a committee what is the update on this refinery,” he said.
Moonilal added, “My Prime Minister is asking me, ‘Minister of Energy, what is happening? When are we restarting the refinery?’ I say, ‘Prime Minister, listen, I’d like to restart that refinery tonight and light the flare up’, but there is an OPR process, and they tell me they have to satisfy this regulation, that regulation, and they have to do this and that, and issue this and that, and look at the registry here and here.”
He said: “And I say, ‘When will we restart the refinery? When everything is corroded and rusty? When are you going to restart the refinery? When you plug it on and blow up Marabella?!'”
Moonilal also noted that under the previous People’s National Movement administration, the OPR had written to the refinery’s holding company, TPHL, stating that the process being used to lease or sell the refinery had “obscure oversight” and “information gaps”.
He said small contractors were struggling to meet OPR requirements.
“This bill is in the interest of restarting the refinery. Small contractors cannot go through this sophisticated process and lengthy timelines, and they get delayed and frustrated,” he said.
Moonilal added that larger contractors, by contrast, wanted the status quo to continue.
“We discovered that a large-scale contractor who received contracts for $200 million-plus was also cutting grass for $50,000,” he said.
He cited submissions from Heritage Petroleum, Paria Fuel Trading Company, the Land Settlement Agency, the National Lotteries Board and others in support of the bill.
“Hundreds of thousands of taxpayers’ dollars are paid by the State sector, responding to challenges regarding the OPR, and some things are frivolous… so if you lose the challenge, you pay,” he said.
He added that the Housing Development Corporation’s $3.4 billion housing project, which the OPR had halted, did not involve taxpayers’ money, but was private sector driven.
