Ani­ka Gumbs-San­di­ford

A US$219 mil­lion dol­lar claim filed by Trinidad En­er­gy In­vest­ments Ltd (Teil) chair­man Karl Hud­son-Phillips, QC, has been set­tled at US$8 mil­lion. The claim was filed in the Port-of-Spain High Court af­ter the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion failed to fol­low through with plans to sup­ply nat­ur­al gas to an am­mo­nia/urea mega plant at the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate.

It was in 2007 Hud­son Phillips, busi­ness­man Ger­ald Hadeed and at­tor­ney Garvin Si­mon­ette had ap­proached the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion with the busi­ness plan. Ap­proval was grant­ed by the Na­tion­al Gas Cor­po­ra­tion (NGC) and the busi­ness ven­ture went be­fore the Cab­i­net en­er­gy sub­com­mit­tee head­ed by for­mer prime min­is­ter, Patrick Man­ning and in­clud­ed for­mer en­er­gy czar Ken Julien and for­mer min­is­ters Lenny Saith and Con­rad Enill.

The plan was ap­proved by Cab­i­net and a Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing (MoU) be­tween Teil and the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion was agreed up­on in 2005. The com­pa­ny, Teil, pos­sessed the on­ly va­cant 50-acre par­cel of land at the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate and to­geth­er with sport­ing fa­cil­i­ties was ex­pect­ed to fa­cil­i­tate am­mo­nia/urea plant.

Fol­low­ing the sign­ing of the MoU, Teil in­vest­ed some US$15 mil­lion to­wards the plant. The in­vest­ments in­clud­ed ne­go­ti­a­tions with in­ter­na­tion­al fi­nanciers from the Unit­ed States, Eu­rope and the far East. Hav­ing en­tered in­to the MoU, the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion and the NGC in­formed Teil that they would no longer be able to sup­ply nat­ur­al gas need­ed for the sup­port of the con­struc­tion of the plant.

An agree­ment to pur­chase the am­mo­nia and urea prod­uct was al­so in place fol­low­ing the com­ple­tion of the plant. As a re­sult, Teil is­sued a no­tice against the Gov­ern­ment for breach of the agree­ment. The fail­ure of the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion to abide by the terms of the MoU led to High Court pro­ceed­ings be­ing com­menced on be­half of Teil against the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, NGC and the Na­tion­al En­er­gy Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T. In its claim, Teil stat­ed it had un­der­tak­en the fol­low­ing:

• Se­cured ap­pro­pri­ate land at the Point Lisas for con­struc­tion of the project

• Ob­tained a cer­tifi­cate of en­vi­ron­men­tal clear­ance to com­mence site prepa­ra­tion/con­struc­tion

• Reached an ad­vanced stage of en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pact as­sess­ment

As a re­sult of the fail­ure to pro­vide nat­ur­al gas for the plant, Teil claimed dam­ages in the sum of US$218,875,209.70 The com­pa­ny al­so claimed al­ter­na­tive dam­ages amount­ing to US$9,315,430.32. Ex­em­plary and puni­tive dam­ages for mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion was al­so filed. At­tor­ney Mar­tin Daly, SC, and Ger­ard Ramdeen ap­peared on be­half of the State.