Joel Julien

“A&V Oil and Gas Lim­it­ed saved you the tax­pay­ers of this coun­try from hav­ing to fork out mil­lions of dol­lars by agree­ing to set­tle our le­gal dis­pute with Petrotrin,” said its chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Hanif Baksh.

Baksh made the state­ment in a re­lease is­sued yes­ter­day in re­sponse to Trinidad Pe­tro­le­um Hold­ings Ltd (TPHL) go­ing against the “ex­treme­ly strong views” of its own le­gal team and opt­ing to pay A&V around $120 mil­lion to put their le­gal dis­pute to rest.

As part of the set­tle­ment, A&V was al­so grant­ed a new ten-year En­hanced Pro­duc­tion Ser­vices Con­tract (EP­SC) with Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um.

“A&V was pleased, how­ev­er, in the ef­forts made to am­i­ca­bly re­solve the mat­ter be­cause A&V recog­nised that Petrotrin may not have been able to pay the judge­ment debt and costs and that the gov­ern­ment would have had to step in to pay the dam­ages,” Baksh said

He ar­gued those dam­ages could have been in the vicin­i­ty of $800 mil­lion.

Baksh said A&V be­lieves Petrotrin should make rep­re­sen­ta­tions for the gov­ern­ment to dis­close the en­tire judge­ment in the case to the pub­lic and lay it in the Par­lia­ment.

“I wish to tell the coun­try that A&V in­tends to put all of the dis­putes be­hind it and go for­ward to ex­plore and ex­tract the max­i­mum amount of oil from the Cat­shill Field so that not on­ly A&V would ben­e­fit, but that the pro­duc­tion of oil by A&V would con­tribute to the na­tion­al econ­o­my,” he stat­ed.

The is­sue sur­round­ing A&V be­gan just over four years ago, when Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar raised the is­sue of “fake oil” in­volv­ing Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s self-pro­claimed friend Baksh.

Ac­cord­ing to Baksh the re­cent judge­ment showed that those state­ments were “in­ac­cu­rate and un­true.”

“At the tri­al, A&V pre­sent­ed ev­i­dence to show that A&V pro­duced the quan­ti­ties of oil that it was paid for by Petrotrin. It pre­sent­ed ev­i­dence to show that the Cat­shill Field had the ca­pac­i­ty to pro­duce the quan­ti­ties of oil and it pre­sent­ed ev­i­dence to show that A&V’s pumps had the ca­pac­i­ty to pump the quan­ti­ties of oil to Petrotrin,” Baksh stat­ed.

On June 11, 2021, an ar­bi­tra­tion pan­el head­ed by for­mer pres­i­dent of the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice, Sir Den­nis By­ron, found that Petrotrin had failed to es­tab­lish that A&V Oil was en­gaged in seal-tam­per­ing or any oth­er in­ap­pro­pri­ate prac­tices in the process of the de­liv­ery of crude oil to Petrotrin dur­ing the pe­ri­od from April 2016 to Ju­ly 2017.

The oth­er ar­bi­tra­tors in­clud­ed Lord David Hope and for­mer Jus­tice of Ap­peal Humphrey Stollmey­er.

The pan­el of ar­bi­tra­tors found that Petrotrin did not have rea­son­able grounds for sus­pect­ing that AV Oil had mis­con­duct­ed it­self or oth­er­wise been in­volved in wrong­ful or fraud­u­lent ac­tiv­i­ty which would have nor­mal­ly en­ti­tled Petrotrin to ter­mi­nate the IP­SC Agree­ment un­der Ar­ti­cle 29.1.

“The case be­tween A&V and Petrotrin went through a pre-tri­al ju­di­cial process for ap­prox­i­mate­ly two years and then a tri­al which last­ed for two weeks. Both A&V and Petrotrin had every op­por­tu­ni­ty to put be­fore the judges all their ev­i­dence and all their sub­mis­sions,” Baksh stat­ed.

“Af­ter that process was com­plet­ed, the judges re­served their de­ci­sion. They de­lib­er­at­ed for months and then de­cid­ed the case in favour of A&V. They re­ject­ed the de­fence of Petrotrin and gave a judge­ment of 76 pages. That was a unan­i­mous de­ci­sion in that the three judges agreed that A&V’s claim against Petrotrin was suc­cess­ful and they re­ject­ed the de­fence of Petrotrin,” he stat­ed.