DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal and his pre­de­ces­sor, Stu­art Young, yes­ter­day clashed in Par­lia­ment over al­le­ga­tions sur­round­ing en­er­gy ser­vices com­pa­ny TN Ram­nauth and Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed.

The con­fronta­tion un­fold­ed in the Low­er House af­ter Young pressed Mooni­lal to dis­close how many lease op­er­a­tor or farm-out agree­ments Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um had grant­ed to TN Ram­nauth or any of its as­so­ci­at­ed com­pa­nies since the Gov­ern­ment took of­fice.

Mooni­lal ini­tial­ly de­clined to an­swer, say­ing the an­swer had been giv­en at a pre­vi­ous sit­ting, prompt­ing Young to ques­tion whether the min­is­ter was re­fus­ing to re­veal how much busi­ness had been award­ed to what he de­scribed as Mooni­lal’s “friend” at TN Ram­nauth.

House Speak­er Jagdeo Singh in­ter­vened, warn­ing that while the min­is­ter may have ad­dressed the is­sue pub­licly be­fore, re­fus­ing to re­spond in Par­lia­ment could un­der­mine the pur­pose of the stand­ing or­ders.

Mooni­lal then con­firmed that an agree­ment had been grant­ed.

“Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed has grant­ed one lease op­er­a­tor­ship agree­ment to TN Ram­nath and Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed. Orig­i­nal­ly, no friend of my­self or any­one on this side,” he said.

He added that the com­pa­ny has been do­ing busi­ness with the state since 1996.

The min­is­ter then turned his crit­i­cism on Young, ac­cus­ing him of act­ing “vin­dic­tive and ma­li­cious.” Mooni­lal said in 2021, six pro­pos­als were rec­om­mend­ed for ap­proval but Young au­tho­rised five—ex­clud­ing TN Ram­nauth.

He said the suc­cess­ful com­pa­nies in­clud­ed Touch­stone Ex­plo­ration, Oil­belt Ser­vices Lim­it­ed, Lease Op­er­a­tors Lim­it­ed, Pe­tro­le­um Con­tract­ing Ser­vices Lim­it­ed and Moon­sie Oil Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed.

Read­ing from min­utes of the meet­ing where the de­ci­sion was tak­en, Mooni­lal said Young had in­di­cat­ed then that he need­ed to con­duct fur­ther in­quiries be­fore ap­prov­ing the Ram­nauth sub­li­cense. He ques­tioned why ap­provals for the oth­er com­pa­nies were com­plet­ed with­in days while the Ram­nauth mat­ter re­mained un­re­solved for years.

“2021 fin­ished, 2022 fin­ished, 2023 fin­ished, 2024 fin­ished, 2025 be­gan and the for­mer min­is­ter was still con­duct­ing in­quiries. That is the lev­el of mal­ice and vin­dic­tive­ness, and wicked­i­ty (sic). Mr Speak­er, hav­ing en­tered of­fice on the third of May 2025, af­ter three months, on the 14th of Ju­ly 2025, I placed on the minute sheet, ‘I have in­quired, ap­proved. Roodal Mooni­lal’.”

He al­so said min­is­ters are re­quired to sign du­pli­cate ap­proval doc­u­ments. Ac­cord­ing to Mooni­lal, Young signed one copy but not the oth­er, prompt­ing him to sign the sec­ond doc­u­ment af­ter as­sum­ing of­fice.

Mooni­lal then called on Young to apol­o­gise to the House and the coun­try.

Young at­tempt­ed to raise an­oth­er is­sue dur­ing the ex­change.

“Mr Speak­er, is the Mem­ber for Oropouche aware that he, along with TN Ram­nauth, are de­fen­dants in a cor­rup­tion mat­ter?”

The Speak­er ruled the ques­tion out of or­der.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia via What­sApp amid the de­bate, Young de­fend­ed his de­ci­sion not to award the con­tract dur­ing his tenure as en­er­gy min­is­ter.

“TN Ram­nauth is the sub­ject of lit­i­ga­tion by EM­BD (Es­tate Man­age­ment and Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment) in a car­tel claim for hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars and Mooni­lal is a de­fen­dant in that lit­i­ga­tion as well. So that was be­ing looked in­to.”

Mooni­lal and the own­er of TN Ram­nauth are co-de­fen­dants in the EM­BD cor­rup­tion case, where four com­pa­nies and EM­BD ex­ec­u­tives were ac­cused of cor­rupt­ly re­ceiv­ing con­tracts.

The mat­ter re­mains be­fore the courts.