State-oil com­pa­ny Petrotrin may be count­ing down the days to clo­sure but Se­nior Coun­sel Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj says the le­gal mat­ter in­volv­ing the com­pa­ny and lease op­er­a­tor A&V Oil and Gas Lim­it­ed lives on.

Ma­haraj said the out­stand­ing mat­ter in­volves mil­lions of dol­lars re­main out­stand­ing and the two com­pa­nies are said to have been “in com­mu­ni­ca­tion” on the es­tab­lish­ment of a three-mem­ber pan­el of ar­bi­tra­tors to de­ter­mine the mer­its of Petrotrin’s case and the mer­its of A&V’s de­fence and claim for com­pen­sa­tion and dam­ages.

A&V was the lease op­er­a­tor on Petrotrin’s Cat­shill field in Moru­ga shot in­to the na­tion­al lime­light af­ter an in­ter­nal au­dit in Au­gust last year found that the lease op­er­a­tor was be­ing paid for oil which it did not sup­ply.

A&V de­nied the al­le­ga­tions and an in­ves­ti­ga­tion was con­duct­ed by Petrotrin which re­tained the ser­vices of Kroll Con­sult­ing Cana­da Com­pa­ny to in­ves­ti­gate the mat­ter. The foren­sic in­ves­ti­ga­tion con­firmed the find­ings of the in­ter­nal au­dit.

An ad­di­tion­al re­port, com­mis­sioned from glob­al oil and gas con­sul­tants Gaffney Cline al­so found that the Cat­shill reser­voir was not ca­pa­ble of pro­duc­ing the vol­umes in ques­tion.

Re­spond­ing to claims in the po­lit­i­cal are­na that the mat­ter in­volv­ing A&V may be over be­cause of the clo­sure of the State-oil com­pa­ny, Ma­haraj made it clear that is not so since he said no court has as yet de­ter­mined the mer­its of Petrotrin’s case against A&V or his client’s de­fence against Petrotrin.

But Ma­haraj said Petrotrin nev­er gave A&V an op­por­tu­ni­ty to call ev­i­dence and for his client to cross-ex­am­ine Petrotrin’s wit­ness­es.

Ma­haraj said the on­ly is­sue which has been de­ter­mined so far is that A&V is not en­ti­tled to get an in­junc­tion to pre­vent Petrotrin from act­ing on the ter­mi­na­tion no­tice of the con­tract.

The mat­ter wend­ed its way through the lo­cal courts and went all the way to the Privy Coun­cil and in Feb­ru­ary this year, Petrotrin was giv­en the all clear by the Privy Coun­cil to ter­mi­nate all con­trac­tu­al oblig­a­tions with A&V Oil and Gas.

Ma­haraj said Petrotrin is hold­ing the sum of TT$84,699,879.47 in an es­crow bank ac­count pend­ing the de­ter­mi­na­tion of the ar­bi­tra­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to Ma­haraj, the mon­ey in ques­tion was due to be paid to A&V by Petrotrin for the sup­ply of crude oil for the pe­ri­od Ju­ly 1, 2017 to De­cem­ber 31, 2017. “These monies are be­ing held by Petrotrin as a se­cu­ri­ty for any monies found by the ar­bi­tra­tors to be due by Petrotrin to A&V,” he said.

He said if the ar­bi­tra­tors de­cide in favour of A&V, the com­pa­ny will be en­ti­tled to re­cov­er the sums, and any ad­di­tion­al monies owed by Petrotrin and any com­pen­sa­tion for the ear­ly ter­mi­na­tion of the con­tract.

A&V is al­so con­tend­ing that Petrotrin owes them for the sup­ply of crude for the pe­ri­od Jan­u­ary 1, 2018 to Feb­ru­ary 28, 2018 in the sum of US$2,284, 398.40, or TT$15,305,469.28.

A&V and Petrotrin en­tered in­to a con­tract in 2009 un­der which A&V was con­tract­ed to ex­tract crude from the Cat­shill Field. The 10-year con­tract would have end­ed in No­vem­ber 2019.

Ma­haraj claims that in the past nine years A&V in­vest­ed the sum of TT$1.1 bil­lion based on its con­trac­tu­al oblig­a­tion to Petrotrin.

Un­der the con­tract Petrotrin had the pow­er to sus­pend the con­tract for “rea­son­able cause,” and al­so pro­vid­ed a dis­pute res­o­lu­tion process which in­volved ne­go­ti­a­tion, me­di­a­tion and ar­bi­tra­tion.

Petrotrin Chair­man Wil­fred Es­pinet con­firmed that Petrotrin has agreed on one mem­ber of the pan­el, A&V has agreed to one per­son and the third mem­ber of the pan­el is yet to be se­lect­ed.

While Ma­haraj is ex­pect­ing that ar­bi­tra­tion would be com­plet­ed ear­ly in 2019, Es­pinet could not say whether he agreed with that time­line.

“ I don’t have a clue how long it will take, re­mem­ber the ar­bi­tra­tion team is not to­geth­er yet,” he said.

Es­pinet al­so con­firmed that the mon­ey in­volved has been “se­cured,” pend­ing the out­come of the ar­bi­tra­tion.