Mar­i­ano Browne

Trinidad and To­ba­go has been in the oil busi­ness for ap­prox­i­mate­ly 125 years. It has been the home of sev­er­al small re­finer­ies (San­ta Flo­ra, La Brea, and Point Fortin), which were all closed over time as they be­came non-vi­able due to age­ing tech­nol­o­gy or sup­ply and cost chal­lenges. The ear­ly re­finer­ies processed lo­cal crude, whilst the Shell re­fin­ery in Point Fortin processed a mix­ture of lo­cal crude and im­port­ed crude. The largest re­fin­ery was ac­quired by Tex­a­co in 1956 and up­grad­ed to process main­ly im­port­ed Mid­dle East­ern crude, blend­ed with lo­cal crude for ex­port to the Unit­ed States East Coast. Its rat­ed ca­pac­i­ty was 360,000 bar­rels of oil a day (BOPD).

Af­ter In­de­pen­dence, as en­er­gy com­pa­nies ex­it­ed the mar­ket at var­i­ous times, the GORTT ac­quired their as­sets and, as a re­sult, formed sep­a­rate state en­ter­pris­es: Trin­topec, Trin­toc, and Trin­mar Ltd. Petrotrin was es­tab­lished in 1993 by the merg­er of Trin­topec and Trin­toc. Trin­mar Ltd was merged in­to Petrotrin in 2000. The Point Fortin re­fin­ery was closed in 1993, leav­ing on­ly the Point A Pierre re­fin­ery. Some in­ef­fi­cient plants/units at Point-a-Pierre were closed, re­duc­ing re­fin­ery ca­pac­i­ty to 170,000 bopd.