Cur­tis Williams

Lead Ed­i­tor Busi­ness

cur­tis.williams@guardian.co.tt

With State-owned Petrotrin hav­ing not tak­en the ad­vice of its at­tor­neys to ur­gent­ly file an ac­tion in the High Court to de­fend it­self against A&V Oil and Gas, comes the rev­e­la­tion that the com­pa­ny has al­ready spent more than $5.5 mil­lion in le­gal fees in both the ar­bi­tra­tion and on the very ad­vice it has so far not ac­cept­ed.

The com­pa­ny has been rep­re­sent­ed by Deb­o­rah Peake S.C, Ravi Haffes-Doon, Tama­ra Toolsie and Mar­celle Fer­di­nand and in re­sponse to a Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion re­quest, Petrotrin said it has so far paid Peake $1,946,250.00, Heffes-Doon $1,634,999.99, Fer­di­nand $1,494,014.02 (in­clud­ing dis­burse­ments) and Toolsie $450,000.00 for a grand to­tal of $5,535,834.01.

Petrotrin, which sent home all its work­ers in 2018 af­ter it went bust and was re­placed by Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um, is at risk of hav­ing to pay A&V hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars af­ter it lost the ar­bi­tra­tion against the south-based com­pa­ny in what is pop­u­lar­ly called the fake oil scan­dal.

In its re­sponse, Petrotrin said the ar­bi­tra­tion is still on­go­ing and ad­mit­ted it has re­ceived le­gal ad­vice that it should go to the High Court to de­fend its in­ter­est.

The re­sponse stat­ed:

“1. The le­gal team com­pris­ing Mrs. Deb­o­rah Peake S.C. and Mr. Ravi Heffes-Doon ad­vised Petrotrin to make a counter-claim against A&V Oil and Gas Lim­it­ed (“A&V”) in the ar­bi­tra­tion com­menced by A&V.

2. The le­gal team com­pris­ing Mrs. Deb­o­rah Peake S.C and Mr. Ravi Heffes-Doon ad­vised Petrotrin that it had a vi­able de­fence to the ar­bi­tra­tion com­menced by A&V.

3. No doc­u­ment ex­ists re­gard­ing the le­gal ad­vice deal­ing with the mer­its of Petrotrin’s ar­bi­tra­tion case.

4. Petrotrin is un­able to pro­vide copies of the wit­ness state­ments to­geth­er with ex­hibits filed on be­half of both par­ties in the ar­bi­tra­tion at this time as:

(i) the ar­bi­tra­tion is not at an end and pre­ma­ture dis­clo­sure of same will be rea­son­ably like­ly to prej­u­dice the fair hear­ing and im­par­tial ad­ju­di­ca­tion of the pro­ceed­ings, pur­suant to sec­tion 28(1)(b) of the FOIA;

(ii) all the wit­ness state­ments were pre­pared and com­mu­ni­cat­ed in con­fi­dence for the pur­pose of the ar­bi­tra­tion, and dis­clo­sure at a time when the ar­bi­tra­tion is not yet at an end may be rea­son­ably like­ly to im­pair Petrotrin’s abil­i­ty to ob­tain the co­op­er­a­tion of wit­ness­es and sim­i­lar in­for­ma­tion in the fu­ture, in­clud­ing for the con­tin­u­a­tion of the pro­ceed­ings, pur­suant to sec­tion 32 (1) of the FOIA; and

(iii) in the fore­go­ing cir­cum­stances, grant­i­ng ac­cess at this time to the re­quest­ed wit­ness state­ments is not jus­ti­fied in the pub­lic in­ter­est hav­ing re­gard both to any ben­e­fit and to any dam­age which may arise from dis­clo­sure.”

With more than a month hav­ing passed since the com­pa­ny re­ceived the ad­vice to file an ur­gent ac­tion in the High Court, its chair­man Michael Quam­i­na re­cent­ly con­firmed that no ac­tion has been filed against A&V Oil and Gas and in­sist­ed that the com­pa­ny’s at­tor­neys are still “look­ing in­to the mat­ter.”

He said, “At present, it is with all of the lawyers, that is all I can tell you.”

Asked when is a de­ci­sion to be made he said, “I have no fur­ther com­ment Cur­tis...You know all of these things are very sen­si­tive, you have lawyers in­volved, they hav­ing their spe­cial talks so I can’t say any­thing more than that.”

Told this was a pub­lic in­ter­est mat­ter and the coun­try had the right to know what is hap­pen­ing Quam­i­na said, “I don’t know how that con­flicts with what I am say­ing. If I have noth­ing to say Cur­tis, I can’t say some­thing be­cause there is pub­lic in­ter­est. I am not be­ing dif­fi­cult but I am be­ing hon­est.”

Told that all lit­i­ga­tion must come to an end he said, “I am not say­ing it is go­ing to con­tin­ue ad-in­fini­tum ei­ther, but the fact about it is, as you say this is a mat­ter of sig­nif­i­cant pub­lic in­ter­est and the point about it is that it is be­ing dealt with very, very ap­pro­pri­ate­ly and com­pre­hen­sive­ly.”

In a con­fi­den­tial 18-page opin­ion done for Petrotrin on the out­come of a re­cent ar­bi­tra­tion be­tween it­self and A&V, Peake ar­gued that the ar­bi­tral pan­el in­volved in the mat­ter made fun­da­men­tal er­rors in com­ing to their con­clu­sion and that the state-owned com­pa­ny had a good chance of suc­cess if it went to the High Court for re­lief.

The opin­ion reads: “In the premis­es, we are of the re­spect­ful view that the award dis­clos­es gross and fun­da­men­tal er­rors on the face of the award and the ar­bi­tra­tors are guilty of mis­con­duct in the con­duct of the pro­ceed­ings. The find­ings on the prin­ci­pal is­sues are ir­ra­tional and un­sup­port­ed by the ev­i­dence. For the fore­go­ing rea­sons, we are of the view that the prospects of set­ting aside the award are good.”

The A&V Oil and Gas is­sue first came to light when Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar read on a po­lit­i­cal plat­form a re­port that al­leged A&V Oil and Gas, which is owned by Naz­im Baksh, a man Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley de­scribes as his friend, was charg­ing Petrotrin for oil his com­pa­ny did not ac­tu­al­ly pro­duce.

Petrotrin would sub­se­quent­ly in­ves­ti­gate the is­sue and dis­con­tin­ue its con­tract with A&V drilling for crude from the Cat­shill field in Rio Claro.

Peake, who rep­re­sent­ed Petrotrin in the ar­bi­tra­tion, ar­gued that un­less moves are made now to stop the ar­bi­tra­tion, the com­pa­ny could find it­self pay­ing out sig­nif­i­cant sums.

“Un­less the award is set aside, there is a high prob­a­bil­i­ty that in any fur­ther hear­ing on the is­sue of the quan­tum of dam­ages to which the tri­bunal has de­cid­ed that A&V is en­ti­tled, the tri­bunal will award sub­stan­tial dam­ages, par­tic­u­lar­ly since it has de­cid­ed (re­mark­ably hav­ing re­gard to the ev­i­dence) that all A&V’s wit­ness­es are cred­i­ble.”

A&V has asked the tri­bunal that it be award­ed US$119,409,000 or the equiv­a­lent of $808,398,930. This does not in­clude is­sues of cost and oth­er mon­ey which Petrotrin is said to be hold­ing in es­crow for oil un­der dis­pute.

How­ev­er, Peake ar­gued that the ar­bi­tral pan­el, which com­prised Sir Den­nis By­ron, Lord David Hope and CVH Stollmey­er, made sev­er­al er­rors dur­ing the mat­ter, in­clud­ing plac­ing an er­ro­neous bur­den of proof on Petrotrin that there were rea­son­able grounds for sus­pi­cion that A&V was mis­rep­re­sent­ing the amount of oil pro­duced and sold to the State com­pa­ny and the pan­el al­so had the wrong stan­dard of proof.

She in­sist­ed that the rul­ing placed Petrotrin and its suc­ces­sor com­pa­ny Her­itage at se­ri­ous fi­nan­cial risk and the pos­si­bil­i­ty of oth­er com­pa­nies tak­ing ad­van­tage of it.

The ar­bi­tral pan­el is yet to make a de­ci­sion on the fi­nal quan­tum it will award A&V drilling as a re­sult of the ter­mi­na­tion of its con­tract by Petrotrin, but Peake not­ed that on Tues­day, A&V had al­ready made an ap­pli­ca­tion for a $75 mil­lion part pay­ment of the mon­ey that would be owed to it due to the award.