Rose­marie Sant/Joel Julien

Three months af­ter Sur­al of­fi­cials vis­it­ed T&T to lob­by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley to restart its Alutech alu­mini­um down­stream project, a board chaired by Prof Ken Julien has been set up to re­view op­tions for the project which was orig­i­nal­ly linked to the Alutrint Smelter in La Brea.

The En­er­gy sub-com­mit­tee of Cab­i­net ap­proved the ap­point­ment of gov­ern­ment's en­er­gy ad­vis­er Julien to head the board. Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials are con­firm­ing that while Alutech is on the cards, the orig­i­nal­ly planned smelter is "def­i­nite­ly off the ta­ble and will not be restart­ed."

But even as Gov­ern­ment is set to launch in­to the project with Alutech, T&T and Sur­al (Bar­ba­dos) Ltd are in a le­gal bat­tle at the Unit­ed States Dis­trict Court for the South­ern Dis­trict of Flori­da be­fore Judge K Michael Moore.

Sur­al took T&T to court seek­ing US$56 mil­lion in dam­ages in con­nec­tion with the alu­mini­um smelter project which was scrapped by the PP gov­ern­ment in 2010 when it came in­to pow­er.

The last sit­ting was on Wednes­day, when Sur­al asked the court for ac­cess to key ev­i­dence it said would help in its at­tempts to un­do an ar­bi­tra­tion tri­bunal's find­ing in favour of T&T with re­spect to the can­celled smelter project.

Last June, the In­ter­na­tion­al Cham­ber of Com­merce's (ICC) In­ter­na­tion­al Court of Ar­bi­tra­tion award­ed US$2.4 mil­lion in favour of T&T.

The ICC ar­bi­tra­tion be­gan in Ju­ly 2012 and fo­cused on T&T's al­leged oblig­a­tion to buy out Sur­al.

On Fri­day, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Nicole Olivierre con­firmed that the Ken Julien-ap­point­ed board had been man­dat­ed to "re­view all as­pects of the fea­si­bil­i­ty of the project" and while she did not elab­o­rate, she con­firmed there will be "no smelter." Among the is­sues which the board would have to look at be­fore the project moves for­ward is that of em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties.

Olivierre did not re­spond to queries on how soon the project would be restart­ed and the cost to the Gov­ern­ment.

Sources said part of the deal was the re­quest for a write-off of a US$50 mil­lion debt owed by Alutrint to Gov­ern­ment. Asked specif­i­cal­ly about this, Olivierre said: "I have no knowl­edge of that."

High-pow­ered team

vis­it­ed Row­ley

This lat­est de­vel­op­ment fol­lowed the April vis­it to this coun­try by a high-pow­ered team from the Venezue­lan-based Sur­al Com­pa­ny to lob­by PM Row­ley to restart the Alutech project.

Dur­ing that vis­it, Sur­al's pres­i­dent Al­fre­do Riv­iere, di­rec­tor of the Sur­al Group Edgard Romero and Alutech di­rec­tor Dave Bhai­joo ad­vised the Prime Min­is­ter and his team that they had in­vest­ed US$20 mil­lion in the project at the Tamana In-Tech Park in Waller­field be­fore the project was stopped.

The Sur­al of­fi­cials had in­di­cat­ed then that they had al­ready pur­chased high-tech equip­ment for the plant which was stored in two ware­hous­es on the com­pound. They al­so made a pre­sen­ta­tion to the Prime Min­is­ter and his team on the pro­duc­tion of high-qual­i­ty alu­mini­um down­stream prod­ucts. The Guardian had re­port­ed this ex­clu­sive­ly.

This news­pa­per learnt that there had been sub­se­quent dis­cus­sions on the restart of the project.

The ini­tial Alutech project was linked to the Alutrint Smelter Plant which was to have been con­struct­ed at the La Brea In­dus­tri­al Es­tate.

The smelter project, which start­ed un­der the Patrick Man­ning PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion, faced ma­jor protests and heavy crit­i­cisms. En­vi­ron­men­tal­ist Dr Wayne Kublals­ingh, physi­cist Dr Pe­ter Vine and con­cerned res­i­dents of La Brea had ex­pressed con­cern about the pol­lu­tion that would be caused by the con­struc­tion of the smelter plant in Union Vil­lage. For­mer AG Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj and the Oil­fieds Work­ers' Trade Union had al­so joined in the march against the smelter.

What Alutech pro­duces

Alutech pro­duces alu­mini­um rims and oth­er down­stream prod­ucts us­ing patent­ed tech­nol­o­gy. Alutrint Smelter was to have pro­duced hot met­al for Alutech to make a num­ber of down­stream prod­ucts, in­clud­ing wheel rims. Asked where the ma­te­r­i­al will now come from, Olivierre said the project will re­quire "im­port­ed in­gots" for the pro­duc­tion of the down­stream prod­ucts.

The Alutech cen­tre was to be the first of its kind in the Caribbean with ro­bots play­ing a key role in the man­u­fac­ture of pressed alu­mini­um coils, bil­lets and wheel rims.

Alutech al­so boasts that the tech­nol­o­gy used for the in­dus­tri­al pro­duc­tion of cast alu­mini­um prod­ucts al­lows for min­i­mum waste and a high de­gree of pre­ci­sion us­ing high­ly cal­i­brat­ed and au­to­mat­ed ma­chin­ery.

JULIEN'S ROLE IN SUR­AL

Julien was the head of the Nat­ur­al Gas Task Force and chair­man of the Na­tion­al En­er­gy Cor­po­ra­tion be­tween 2007 and 2010, and he was the lead per­son in the then PNM gov­ern­ment's dis­cus­sions; he was in­stru­men­tal in per­form­ing due dili­gence on Sur­al.

In a state­ment to the Par­lia­ment in May 2015, for­mer fi­nance min­is­ter Lar­ry Howai said the for­mer PNM gov­ern­ment had spent US$75 mil­lion ($474.4 mil­lion) on the Alutrint project.

Dur­ing the ar­bi­tra­tion tri­bunal for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan, Leroy May­ers, Colleen Mur­ray, Adri­an Bernard and ex­pert wit­ness David Stern (char­tered ac­coun­tant and part­ner of Stone­Turn LLP, UK) ap­peared as wit­ness­es for T&T.

The wit­ness­es for Sur­al were Prof Ken Julien, Dr Al­fre­do Riv­iere, Ren­da But­ler, and ex­pert wit­ness Christo­pher Sto­bart (UK com­modi­ties ex­pert).

The ar­bi­tra­tors were Lord Collins as pres­i­dent (for­mer judge of the Unit­ed King­dom Supreme Court); Charles N Brow­er, who was a judge in the Iran-Unit­ed States Claims Tri­bunal at the Hague; and Ali Malek QC.

ROW­LEY WAS CON­CERNED

In 2014, the then op­po­si­tion leader and now Prime Min­is­ter Dr Row­ley had raised con­cerns about a US$100 mil­lion claim in the US from Sur­al.

In April 2015, for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Garvin Nicholas said he was await­ing the judge­ment in the sec­ond Sur­al ar­bi­tra­tion in which Sur­al Bar­ba­dos had sued the State for over US$700 mil­lion.