The Heritage Petroleum Company Ltd (HPCL) paid an estimated US$975 million toward the refinancing of the Trinidad Petroleum Holdings Ltd (TPHL) group’s debt, Trade and Industry Minister Paula Gopee Scoon has confirmed.
She told the Senate on Tuesday that the payment, which resulted in Standard and Poor’s (S&P) upgrading the groupings rating from B+ to BB, was the second refinancing of TPHL’s debt, with the first instance having taken place in 2019.)
“Heritage Petroleum Company Ltd, a subsidiary of Trinidad Petroleum Holdings Ltd (TPHL) group approached the international financial market in May 2022 to refinance TPHL’s remaining debt that was inherited from PETROTRIN,” she told the Senate.
The trade and industry minister, who was answering an opposition legislator’s question said TPHL’s debt, “which resulted from PETROTRIN’s debt, comprised the US$850 million bullet bond from PETROTRIN that was due to mature in August 2019, part of a US$750 million amortizing bond, plus certain costs of the restructuring of PETROTRIN into the various companies comprising the TPHL group.”
In 2018, the government shut down the loss-making state owned PETROTRIN and replaced it with the TPHL, comprising four subsidiaries.
Gopee Scoon told the Senate that the re-financing was first undertaken in 2019 and subsequently in 2022.
“In this current round of refinancing in 2022, Heritage closed a US$500 million senior secured bond transaction, and US$475 million senior secured term loan which enabled it to refinance the debt and implement a comfortable lower cost and longer term debt maturity profile, as well as remove several restrictive loan covenants that were in place since the 2019 refinancing, such as covenants that limited or restricted the disposal of non-core real estate assets of the former PETROTRIN,” she added.
She was however not able to give the rate of interest, the maturity date, or the financiers.
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