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Friday, July 25, 2025

En­er­gy ex­pert re­sponds to PM’s crit­i­cism

Petrojam comment intended to ensure transparency

by

165 days ago
20250210
Energy expert Anthony Paul

Energy expert Anthony Paul

Anisto Alves

En­er­gy con­sul­tant An­tho­ny Paul, who was crit­i­cised by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley for his com­ments on the Paria fu­els pur­chase deal in­volv­ing Petro­jam, yes­ter­day de­nied he was mo­ti­vat­ed by a “per­son­al grouse.”En­er­gy

In a me­dia state­ment, he said his mo­ti­va­tion in analysing and cri­tiquing gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy and ac­tions was “to en­sure that the trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty mea­sures al­ready ex­ist­ing in our laws and reg­u­la­tions are im­ple­ment­ed.”

Paul, the Chair­man of the Lloyd Best In­sti­tute of the Caribbean and a di­rec­tor of the Nat­ur­al Re­sources Gov­er­nance In­sti­tute, said the case cit­ed by Dr Row­ley over fail­ure to se­cure a gov­ern­ment con­tract oc­curred more than ten years ago.

He ex­plained: “For the record, the pro­pos­al in ques­tion was de­vel­oped by a team of con­sul­tants in 2015 in re­sponse to our un­der­stand­ing of the con­di­tions of the oil and gas in­dus­try, and specif­i­cal­ly the ca­pa­bil­i­ty chal­lenges fac­ing the Min­istry of En­er­gy, as pol­i­cy mak­er and reg­u­la­tor.

“The firm saw the need for suc­ces­sion plan­ning, as T&T’s sec­tor lead­ers were all re­tired or ap­proach­ing that stage. Our pro­pos­al was to sup­port the Min­istry in its day-to-day work, while coach­ing and men­tor­ing staff, us­ing meth­ods that would fa­cil­i­tate knowl­edge trans­fer to aid the de­vel­op­ment of the next gen­er­a­tion of lead­ers.”

Cab­i­net ap­proved the pro­gramme but award­ed the con­tract to a for­eign firm, Paul said.

He added: “It is dif­fi­cult to es­cape the irony of the pub­lic dis­clo­sure of a pri­vate firm’s fi­nan­cial bid by the head of a gov­ern­ment that re­peat­ed­ly re­fus­es to dis­close pub­lic fees ac­tu­al­ly paid by the Gov­ern­ment to cer­tain cat­e­gories of pri­vate con­sul­tants, no­tably lawyers, on the grounds of se­cu­ri­ty risks.

“Yet as a pri­vate in­di­vid­ual, I am placed at risk by the im­pli­ca­tions con­veyed by non-ex­is­tent rev­enue earn­ings.”

Paul said for the past 20 years, he has con­tributed to dis­cus­sion on the state of T&T’s oil and gas sec­tor.

“Apart from my con­sul­tan­cy work, my pub­lic con­tri­bu­tion is un­paid work, de­liv­ered with the sole in­tent of plac­ing my ex­per­tise at the ser­vice of the pub­lic in­ter­est. This is how I con­tribute to the de­vel­op­ment of my coun­try and oth­ers in need,” he said.

“Suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments have al­so drawn up­on my 40 plus years of ex­pe­ri­ence in a wide range of roles and coun­tries, call­ing on me to serve as Deputy Chair­man and Chair­man of the Cab­i­net-ap­point­ed Per­ma­nent Lo­cal Con­tent Com­mit­tee from 2004 to 2020, fre­quent­ly with­out com­pen­sa­tion.”


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