Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries Dr Roodal Mooni­lal has ex­pressed sup­port for his min­is­te­r­i­al col­league Ernesto Ke­sar, who was named in a re­cent High Court rul­ing against the Oil­field Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU).

On June 30, High Court Judge Car­ol Gob­in up­held a case brought by KCL Cap­i­tal Mar­ket Bro­kers Lim­it­ed against the OW­TU and its as­so­ci­at­ed com­pa­ny, Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gies and Tech­nolo­gies Lim­it­ed, which was es­tab­lished as part of the union’s bid to ac­quire the Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery.

The dis­pute re­volved around two loan agree­ments en­tered in­to be­tween KCL Cap­i­tal and the OW­TU, through its then-trustees Ozzi War­wick, Ray­mond Hug­gins, and Ke­sar, be­tween No­vem­ber 2019 and May 2020.

Ke­sar, for­mer­ly the OW­TU’s vice pres­i­dent, won the Point Fortin con­stituen­cy in the re­cent­ly con­clud­ed Gen­er­al Elec­tion and was ap­point­ed Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries.

In her rul­ing, Jus­tice Gob­in re­ject­ed the union’s claim that it could not be held li­able be­cause it was not un­just­ly en­riched by the loans, which to­talled over US$4 mil­lion. Por­tions of the funds were paid to the OW­TU and to Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gies and Tech­nolo­gies Lim­it­ed, the com­pa­ny formed by the union to sup­port its failed at­tempt to ac­quire Petrotrin’s re­fin­ery.

The loans were in­tend­ed to cov­er le­gal, tech­ni­cal, and fi­nan­cial con­sul­tan­cy fees re­lat­ed to the ac­qui­si­tion bid.

When asked to com­ment on Ke­sar be­ing named in the judg­ment, and whether his role in gov­ern­ment should be re­viewed, Mooni­lal de­fend­ed his col­league’s po­si­tion and con­tri­bu­tions.

“I have tak­en note of the rul­ing of the High Court in a mat­ter in­volv­ing the OW­TU and oth­ers. Min­is­ter Ernesto Ke­sar is an ex­treme­ly valu­able com­po­nent of our min­istry. He has enor­mous ex­per­tise, skill, and ex­pe­ri­ence in the oil and gas sec­tor, from the shop floor up, and he is in­valu­able to our min­istry and our mis­sion of re­turn­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go to its place as the en­er­gy hub of the Caribbean,” Mooni­lal said.

He ac­knowl­edged that the court rul­ing presents chal­lenges for the OW­TU but em­pha­sised that the min­istry’s work will con­tin­ue un­abat­ed.

“My­self, Min­is­ter Ke­sar, and the staff at the min­istry will con­tin­ue to forge ahead with our plans. Now that a re­fin­ery restart com­mit­tee is in place, with­in four months or less we will have a clear pic­ture of the re­sults of the tech­ni­cal as­sess­ment of the state of the Guaracara re­fin­ery,” he said.

Speak­ing at a post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing on Thurs­day, Mooni­lal al­so stressed that the gov­ern­ment’s re­la­tion­ship with the OW­TU will not af­fect the re­fin­ery as­sess­ment process.

“We just want to get an hon­est, in­de­pen­dent tech­ni­cal as­sess­ment,” he said.