Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

A war of words has bro­ken out be­tween cur­rent En­er­gy Min­is­ter Roodal Mooni­lal and for­mer En­er­gy min­is­ter Stu­art Young, over Mooni­lal’s ac­cu­sa­tions of an al­leged “$6 bil­lion er­ror” in a pric­ing ma­trix un­der Young’s tenure.

But Young, re­spond­ing to a Guardian Me­dia query on the is­sue, which Mooni­lal raised again yes­ter­day, said, “Min­is­ter Mooni­lal’s at­tempt to at­tribute blame to me and the pre­vi­ous Cab­i­net for what he has ad­mit­ted is a pric­ing ma­trix er­ror in a pre­vi­ous Cab­i­net note, reeks of des­per­a­tion.

“The pric­ing ma­trix would have been pre­pared by the tech­ni­cal staff at the Min­istry of En­er­gy and vet­ted by the tech­ni­cal staff, in­clud­ing the Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary.”

Young added, “I do not know what are the specifics that he’s re­fer­ring to but I am con­fi­dent that it was not due to any ‘er­ror’ on the part of the (for­mer) Cab­i­net nor my­self. I un­der­stand that Min­is­ter Mooni­lal is strug­gling to prove him­self in his new role and is out of his depth, but he should keep his the­atre out of the se­ri­ous busi­ness of the en­er­gy sec­tor.”

Af­ter yes­ter­day’s Cab­i­net meet­ing, Mooni­lal re­count­ed to re­porters the “$6 bil­lion” is­sue he’d aired at Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress’ pub­lic meet­ing on Mon­day. He said Cab­i­net yes­ter­day ap­proved an En­er­gy Min­istry note con­cern­ing amend­ments to a pro­duc­tion shar­ing con­tract for a block award­ed to Wood­side En­er­gy. It’s in­tend­ed that Wood­side and BP would have en­tered talks for de­vel­op­ment of this field.

Mooni­lal said on en­ter­ing of­fice, he found that for­mer min­is­ter Young had tak­en a note to cab­i­net in Jan­u­ary, which asked the cab­i­net to agree to that pro­duc­tion shar­ing con­tract in par­tic­u­lar.

“Cab­i­net agreed to this in­volv­ing the min­istry, Wood­side and BP.”

Mooni­lal al­leged, “It was dis­cov­ered in April that the note tak­en to cab­i­net and ap­proved con­tained a detri­men­tal ma­trix in­volv­ing cost­ing and re­turns to the gov­ern­ment and peo­ple by way of prof­it share and the ta­ble that was ap­proved and rec­om­mend­ed by Mr Young and ap­proved by the then cab­i­net of then prime min­is­ter Kei­th Row­ley ... con­firmed a note that re­duced the gov­ern­ment share of the prof­its of this par­tic­u­lar prof­it shar­ing con­tract by be­tween 20 to 30 per cent.”

He added, “What it meant is T&T stood to lose rev­enue of $6.7 bil­lion over the life of the pro­posed deep wa­ter de­vel­op­ment, due to the note by Mr Young, if we didn’t act to­day on it.”

He said the PNM cab­i­net that passed the note in Jan­u­ary in­clud­ed cur­rent Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ny Beck­les and oth­er cur­rent PNM Par­lia­men­tar­i­ans.

Mooni­lal said the “mis­take” was picked up by Wood­side and brought to Gov­ern­ment’s at­ten­tion and they moved quick­ly to dis­cuss with the stake­hold­ers and yes­ter­day ap­proved a new nat­ur­al gas price class struc­ture and ma­trix. That gave the Gov­ern­ment, at the low­est end, a 10 per cent in­crease and at the high­est end, a 20 per cent in­crease in rev­enue for the project.

“By pass­ing one note to­day we earned TT$7 bil­lion,” Mooni­lal added.

He said he’d asked for a min­istry in­ves­ti­ga­tion on how an er­ror or mis­cal­cu­la­tion could oc­cur.

“The pre­lim­i­nary ex­pla­na­tion was that it was a mis­take. I’ve asked for fur­ther ex­am­i­na­tion in terms of the de­ci­sion-mak­ing process and lay­ers in­volved and al­so asked to be in­formed of the di­rect par­tic­i­pa­tion of the for­mer min­is­ter in this,” Mooni­lal said, al­leg­ing it was an “ex­treme­ly weird, dis­turb­ing and sus­pi­cious de­vel­op­ment.”

Roodal en­dors­es Kam­la as leader

Some­one would have to be men­tal­ly de­ranged to con­sid­er con­test­ing the post of Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress leader against in­cum­bent Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, says deputy leader Roodal Mooni­lal.

“... But there are peo­ple like that I know,” he added at yes­ter­day’s post-Cab­i­net meet­ing.

Mooni­lal added, “You don’t go where ea­gles dare. I ful­ly en­dorse the po­lit­i­cal leader Ho­n­ourable Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to re­turn as the next po­lit­i­cal leader of the UNC. There’s ab­solute­ly no va­can­cy.”

He added that his con­stituen­cy al­so sup­ports her for leader.

Mooni­lal al­so said the full board of the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny will be an­nounced ear­ly next week and con­firmed that Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny CEO Erik Kesku­la had re­signed, as he had sought and ob­tained an­oth­er pro­fes­sion­al role else­where.