Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

For­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Stu­art Young says cur­rent min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal’s claim of re­cov­er­ing rev­enue from a pro­duc­tion shar­ing con­tract is “fic­ti­tious” as the project in­volved isn’t sanc­tioned yet. He’s al­so called on Mooni­lal to say whether Wood­side En­er­gy is still pur­su­ing the deep wa­ter Ca­lyp­so project or prepar­ing to leave T&T.

Young is­sued a state­ment yes­ter­day morn­ing, in the lat­est round of “hos­til­i­ties” af­ter Mooni­lal’s ac­cu­sa­tion on Thurs­day of an al­leged “$6 bil­lion er­ror” in a pric­ing ma­trix un­der Young’s tenure.

Mooni­lal said the Cab­i­net ap­proved a note on Thurs­day con­cern­ing amend­ments to a pro­duc­tion shar­ing con­tract for a block award­ed to Wood­side En­er­gy. Mooni­lal said it’s in­tend­ed that Wood­side and BP would have en­tered talks for the de­vel­op­ment of this field.

Mooni­lal said on en­ter­ing of­fice, he found that Young had tak­en a note to the then cab­i­net in Jan­u­ary, which asked for them to agree to that pro­duc­tion shar­ing con­tract and it was done. Mooni­lal said it was dis­cov­ered in April that the note “con­tained a detri­men­tal ma­trix in­volv­ing cost­ing and re­turns to the gov­ern­ment and T&T by way of prof­it share.”

He claimed the ta­ble that was ap­proved and rec­om­mend­ed by Young “re­duced Gov­ern­ment’s share” of this par­tic­u­lar prof­it-shar­ing con­tract by 20 to 30 per cent. Mooni­lal claimed it meant T&T stood to lose rev­enue of $6.7 bil­lion over the life of the pro­posed deep wa­ter de­vel­op­ment, due to the note.

But he said the Cab­i­net on Thurs­day ap­proved a new nat­ur­al gas price class struc­ture and ma­trix, which “earned” Gov­ern­ment al­most $7 bil­lion. Mooni­lal said a probe will be done in­to how the “$6.7B” er­ror oc­curred.

But Young replied yes­ter­day, “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 that he refers to would have been pre­pared by the tech­ni­cal staff at the Min­istry of En­er­gy and vet­ted by the tech­ni­cal staff, in­clud­ing the Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary.

“I do not know what are the specifics that he is re­fer­ring to, but I’m con­fi­dent that it was not due to any ‘er­ror’ on the part of the cab­i­net nor my­self. The pric­ing ma­trix would be a com­plex for­mu­la that seeks to share prof­its made from the gas pro­duced at vary­ing glob­al gas prices af­ter de­duct­ing the re­cov­ery of costs and fis­cal terms. This was all ne­go­ti­at­ed by the Min­istry of En­er­gy’s very com­pe­tent tech­ni­cal staff, who would have pre­pared the Cab­i­net Note and Pro­duc­tion Shar­ing Con­tract.”

Young fur­ther con­tend­ed, “What is al­so pa­thet­ic is Mooni­lal’s claim that this Gov­ern­ment has re­cov­ered rev­enue. This is an­oth­er bla­tant at­tempt to hood­wink the pop­u­la­tion as the project which the pro­duc­tion shar­ing con­tract refers to has not even been sanc­tioned.

“Wood­side and BP haven’t tak­en a de­ci­sion to pro­duce this block, so any claim of re­cov­ered rev­enue is fic­ti­tious and based on con­jec­ture. In fact, Min­is­ter Mooni­lal should ad­vise the coun­try if Wood­side is still pur­su­ing the deep­wa­ter project ‘Ca­lyp­so’ or if they are prepar­ing to shut down their op­er­a­tions and de­part Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

Young claimed, “It’s clear that Min­is­ter Mooni­lal is strug­gling to prove him­self in his new role and is out of his depth. He con­tin­ues grasp­ing at straws whilst sur­viv­ing off of the work that was done pre­vi­ous­ly. His claims that he would pur­sue gas in Grena­da, Suri­name and Guyana have evap­o­rat­ed and every ut­ter­ance he makes about suc­cess­ful gas pro­duc­tion is a re­sult of pre­vi­ous work and noth­ing to do with him. Mooni­lal would do well to keep the the­atre out of the se­ri­ous busi­ness of the en­er­gy sec­tor.”

Mooni­lal didn’t re­ply to Guardian Me­dia’s ques­tions on whether Wood­side is car­ry­ing out the Ca­lyp­so project or de­part­ing T&T and on Young’s com­ments.

But half an hour lat­er, the En­er­gy Min­istry is­sued a state­ment wel­com­ing, “The com­ple­tion of Peren­co’s ac­qui­si­tion of the Greater An­gos­tu­ra pro­duc­ing oil and gas as­sets and as­so­ci­at­ed pro­duc­tion fa­cil­i­ties from Wood­side En­er­gy in T&T.”

Young said he had ap­proved that Peren­co ac­qui­si­tion dur­ing his tenure.