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Tuesday, July 8, 2025

Quamina denies conflict of interest in taking TPH job

by

Gail Alexander
2144 days ago
20190824
 Attorney Michael Quamina

Attorney Michael Quamina

None at all.

New Trinidad Pe­tro­le­um Hold­ings Com­pa­ny Ltd chair­man Michael Quam­i­na sees no con­flict of in­ter­est be­tween his TPH­CL role and the fact that he rep­re­sent­ed Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley against last year’s at­tempts by UNC MP Roodal Mooni­lal to link Row­ley with AV Drilling which was at the cen­tre of Petrotrin’s al­leged “fake oil” scan­dal.

“That (per­cep­tion of con­flict of in­ter­est) is base­less,” Quam­i­na told the Sun­day Guardian when asked about the mat­ter

“Hav­ing re­gard to the is­sue that I was deal­ing with, and my cur­rent role as Chair­man TPHL, there is ab­solute­ly no con­flict.”

Quam­i­na had been at Row­ley’s side at a me­dia con­fer­ence in Oc­to­ber 2018 when the Prime Min­is­ter re­spond­ed to al­le­ga­tions by Mooni­lal in Par­lia­ment’s Bud­get de­bate. Al­le­ga­tions were against Row­ley and the own­er of A&V Oil and Gas Hanif Baksh.

Mooni­lal who sub­se­quent­ly with­drew the al­le­ga­tions, had al­lud­ed to a Mi­a­mi bank ac­count. Row­ley who re­spond­ed in Par­lia­ment and at the me­dia con­fer­ence with Quam­i­na, said he had no Mi­a­mi bank ac­count.

AV Drilling is at the cen­tre of al­le­ga­tions on the so called “fake oil” mat­ter un­cov­ered by the Op­po­si­tion in 2017. The is­sue is cur­rent­ly with the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP).

Quam­i­na was an­nounced as TPCHL chair­man last Thurs­day, re­plac­ing Wil­fred Es­pinet. Out­go­ing HDC chair­man New­man George was al­so ap­point­ed to chair the Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny and Guaracara Re­fin­ing Com­pa­ny.

An at­tor­ney, Quam­i­na has al­so been le­gal ad­vis­er for PNM’s Camille Robin­son-Reg­is (on bank with­draw­al is­sues), ex Min­is­ter Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald (when he wrote to the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion in 2017 on sta­tus of in­ves­ti­ga­tions against her), Team Row­ley (in 2018 PNM elec­tions) and the Works Min­istry (on Curepe In­ter­change is­sues).

On per­cep­tion of crony­ism and nepo­tism aris­ing from rep­re­sent­ing the PM and oth­er Min­is­ters, Quam­i­na replied: “ I do rep­re­sent many mem­bers of Gov­ern­ment, not on­ly in T&T but in sev­er­al is­lands through­out the Caribbean.”

“What that does is sim­ply pro­vide them with an op­por­tu­ni­ty to in­ter­act with me on a pro­fes­sion­al ba­sis. That I sus­pect has pro­vid­ed the grounds for me be­ing hand­ed many tasks, this one in­clud­ed.”

On con­cerns about lack of en­er­gy sec­tor ex­pe­ri­ence, Quam­i­na added: “Ex­pe­ri­ence in the en­er­gy sec­tor is, of course, an as­set, but it’s not the on­ly as­set.”

“I do have many clients in the en­er­gy sec­tor, and as such, I am quite fa­mil­iar with the in­dus­try from that point of view. What I do bring to the ta­ble, apart from my le­gal train­ing, is twen­ty years of ex­pe­ri­ence serv­ing on and ad­vis­ing both pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tor boards, which I con­sid­er to be an equal­ly im­por­tant as­set.

“I am not an ex­ec­u­tive chair­man. I can and will learn what I need to know about the in­dus­try quick­ly, but my em­pha­sis will be on staffing the or­gan­i­sa­tion with per­sons with the rel­e­vant ex­pe­ri­ence.”

Quam­i­na who meets with TPH­CL man­age­ment to­mor­row, said he’ll have to do that be­fore he can re­spond to queries on how he’ll pro­ceed with arrange­ments for out­go­ing Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny CEO Mike Wylie.

Wylie has been in the US for the last two months un­der­go­ing can­cer treat­ment and had to be away for six more months al­though he’d planned to con­tin­ue su­per­vis­ing Her­itage from over­seas along with a five mem­ber lead­er­ship team in T&T. Sources said he’d have op­er­at­ed on that ba­sis for a pay re­duc­tion. His re­mu­ner­a­tion in his three year con­tract was (TT) $240,000 month­ly (US $450,000 an­nu­al­ly) plus hous­ing, trans­porta­tion and health.

Last week how­ev­er Gov­ern­ment said the arrange­ment of su­per­vis­ing Her­itage from over­seas —which Es­pinet had sanc­tioned— wasn’t fea­si­ble for such an im­por­tant com­pa­ny and a per­ma­nent re­place­ment for Wylie would be found.

Yes­ter­day Her­itage sources said Wylie, who was in­formed of Gov­er­ment’s de­ci­sion when it was an­nounced last week, sent a note on the de­vel­op­ment to his team and wished them all the best.

Sources say a for­mer en­er­gy sec­tor ex­ec­u­tive is tipped to be Her­itage CEO. Gov­ern­ment had said Quam­i­na would work out the de­tails of an ex­it pack­age for Wylie and Quam­i­na had a lot of in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions/court ex­pe­ri­ence.

Quam­i­na who was al­so asked if Gov­ern­ment would have to pay Wylie’s US med­ical bills, told SG he’d have to con­sid­er doc­u­men­ta­tion on Wylie’s is­sue and/or meet with the man­age­ment team be­fore he could re­spond to all the queries.


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