For five months, 4,000 Petrotrin workers protested for the quarter billion dollars in bonus money promised to them.

The State-owned oil company had reneged on its agreement, they said, to pay each of its workers a lump sum of $60,000.

The profit-sharing agreement was reached last year between the company and the Oilfields Workers’ Trade Union.

But the company backed out on the deal.

They simply didn’t have the money, it said.

They blamed the global economic downturn and its ruinous effect on oil and gas prices for this.

In June, newly-installed Petrotrin president Kenneth Allum was telling the media the cupboard was almost bare; the company had posted a $600 million loss between October 2008 and May 2009.

’We are recording losses so far in the region, probably at the end of May, I think, somewhere in the region of $500 to $600 million.’

The union, he said, was advised of the company’s position and that management was looking at cutting costs in all areas of its operations.

And because profits were not made, the bonus money would now have to be paid in three tranches over a three-year period.

Even the Minister of Energy Conrad Enill gave his take on the situation at the oil company by giving assurances there was no ’question of closing Petrotrin’ because of the $600 million in losses, in the midst of a refinery upgrade over budget and behind schedule.

’The loss that you are talking about is a function of the business.

’The Government is supporting them right now in terms of loans and so on,’ he had said two months back.

But as it turns out, Petrotrin may have had more than enough money to pay all $240,000,000 to the workers this year.

At least according to the figure provided to the Sunday Express by the Energy Ministry in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FIA) request made in July.

It took 41 days to get the figures.

The Energy Ministry, the public authority responsible for Petrotrin, revealed the company made an after-tax profit of $2,463 million for the period 2007/2008.

The ministry said: ’Newspaper reports indicated a projected loss of $600 million for the period October 2008 to June 2009. This did not materialise.’