Gail Alexan­der

While Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has praised ser­vice to T&T by for­mer Petrotrin chair­man, Mal­com Jones, he al­so ad­mit­ted yes­ter­day the World Gas to Liq­uids (WGTL) project – done un­der Jones – had failed.

"It's ac­cept­ed with­out ques­tion that WGTL failed and it came to grief... it's one project that went hor­ri­bly bad... that isn't an is­sue for de­bate, it's a clear state­ment," Row­ley said at yes­ter­day's week­ly post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing at the Of­fice of the PM, St Clair.

Say­ing Jones had re­signed from Gov­ern­ment's En­er­gy Sub-Com­mit­tee (ESC) since March 23, Row­ley said his re­place­ment was one-time Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment fi­nance min­is­ter Wen­dell Mot­t­ley.

Mot­t­ley helmed Fi­nance un­der the 1991-1995 Patrick Man­ning PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion, led the now de­funct Cit­i­zens Al­liance and was a Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) foun­da­tion mem­ber.

Row­ley claimed word of Mot­t­ley's place in the ESC had emerged af­ter Jones re­signed but he said it was now big­ger "news" fol­low­ing an Op­po­si­tion mo­tion last week con­cern­ing Jones and the Petrotrin-WGTL is­sue.

He said Jones was one of two peo­ple, Ken Julien be­ing the oth­er, who pro­vid­ed yeo­man ser­vice in en­er­gy de­vel­op­ment. Hav­ing said that, in the area of Petrotrin, he not­ed WGTL's fail­ure.

Row­ley said the WGTL mat­ter was a "busi­ness deal that went bad for a State-owed com­pa­ny." He added it was one of many projects Petrotrin had en­tered in­to and "this one failed."

He said Jones had been re­luc­tant to serve on the ESC due to health rea­sons but was per­suad­ed to give in­put on Petrotrin.He said while some could point to the "spec­tac­u­lar fail­ure of WGTL," to be fair, one had al­so to note Jones' ser­vice else­where. He said Jones' res­ig­na­tion was ac­cept­ed April 8 af­ter a suc­ces­sor was found.

He crit­i­cised Op­po­si­tion "per­se­cu­tion" of Jones and rub­bished the Op­po­si­tion's claim of a Gov­ern­ment deal with Ni­quan.

Say­ing the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship case against Jones lacked wit­ness­es or wit­ness state­ments, Row­ley said the PNM would not "slav­ish­ly" fol­low the case against Jones.He al­so said a re­ceiv­er for WGTL was be­ing paid "mil­lions" and Gov­ern­ment had to halt that.

A pro­pos­al for Petrotrin to deal with it was be­ing fi­nalised, he added. Row­ley said Petrotrin had pay­ments com­ing in 2019 which were an is­sue. He said he asked Mot­t­ley to join the ESC since he brought the kind of skill Gov­ern­ment re­quired and "when it's done, we know it will be done well as he has a record of ex­cel­lence."

Row­ley al­so said Mot­t­ley was head­ing Gov­ern­ment's ne­go­ti­at­ing team on the pro­posed San­dals To­ba­go project.He said the team in­clud­ed Ter­rence Far­rell, Rolph Bal­go­b­in, Michael Small, Glen Lash­ley, Fi­nance and THA rep­re­sen­ta­tives. He said a site was iden­ti­fied. He said San­dals was be­ing sought since its brand name would ben­e­fit To­ba­go tourism which des­per­ate­ly need­ed brand name ho­tels.

He must ex­plain fi­as­co–Roodal

Mal­colm Jones' res­ig­na­tion from Gov­ern­ment's En­er­gy stand­ing com­mit­tee is not the end of the WGTL mat­ter and he must ex­plain its cir­cum­stances and how $3 bil­lion of tax­pay­ers' funds were lost in this un­der his Petrotrin tenure, says Op­po­si­tion MP Roodal Mooni­lal.

Last week in Par­lia­ment, Mooni­lal had slammed Jones over the WGTL is­sue dur­ing a mo­tion of no con­fi­dence against the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al over the lat­ter's move in March to have Petrotrin dis­con­tin­ue le­gal pro­ceed­ings start­ed by the PP ad­min­is­tra­tion against Jones on the WGTL mat­ter.

Yes­ter­day, Mooni­lal said he did not feel Jones' res­ig­na­tion was a vin­di­ca­tion.He added: "He has tak­en a con­scious de­ci­sion to es­cape the lime­light to avoid ac­count­abil­i­ty but 'Jones 34,' as this mat­ter will hence­forth be known, lives on and be­fore he hides from the pub­lic lime­light he must ac­count.

"His res­ig­na­tion isn't to gain ho­n­our but to hide from the scan­dal. I will con­tin­ue to use the Par­lia­ment to high­light this as his res­ig­na­tion rais­es more ques­tions than pro­vides an­swers.

"One of the ques­tions is that when the AG and 'as­sis­tant AG' (Stu­art Young) spoke on the mo­tion last Fri­day, nei­ther in­formed the Par­lia­ment Jones had re­signed since March. This is mys­te­ri­ous."

OW­TU head An­cel Ro­get al­so said yes­ter­day the sit­u­a­tion did not end with Jones' res­ig­na­tion since he must ac­count for his fail­ure at Petrotrin.