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.