A vir­tu­al shout­ing match de­vel­oped in Cab­i­net be­tween for­mer En­er­gy Min­is­ter Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan and the man who re­placed her at the Min­istry of En­er­gy Kevin Ram­nar­ine. At is­sue was a Cab­i­net Note call­ing for the award of two petro­chem­i­cal projects to a Sau­di Ara­bi­an com­pa­ny, which could re­sult in the coun­try sub­si­dis­ing the firm to the sum of mil­lions of dol­lars an­nu­al­ly. Well-placed sources in the Cab­i­net told the Guardian that there were heat­ed ex­changes be­tween the two and even­tu­al­ly the Cab­i­net Note had to be with­drawn by Ram­nar­ine and was amend­ed and brought back to the Cab­i­net yes­ter­day. "I looked on in amaze­ment at the ac­ri­mo­ny be­tween the two as they had it out over the deal," a Cab­i­net source told the Guardian.

The con­tro­ver­sy erupt­ed af­ter Ram­nar­ine asked the Cab­i­net to agree to award two projects val­ued at US$5.3 bil­lion (TT$34 bil­lion) to Sau­di Ara­bia's state- owned com­pa­ny, Sau­di Ba­sic In­dus­tries Cor­po­ra­tion (SABIC) for the con­struc­tion of a methanol to olefins plant and a methanol to petro­chem­i­cal com­plex. Seep­er­sad-Bachan re­port­ed­ly ob­ject­ed to the note be­cause it pro­posed a nat­ur­al gas price that is even low­er than what the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) pays its sup­pli­ers for the com­mod­i­ty. The Cab­i­net Note in­di­cates that the of­fer that SABIC made for gas was 36 per cent be­low NGC's cost price or US$0.86 per mmb­tu. Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day Ram­nar­ine in­sist­ed that there was no agree­ment on gas pric­ing and that the process was that a project is eval­u­at­ed based on the es­tab­lished cri­te­ria for down­stream projects and a gas price agree­ment is on­ly worked out af­ter the project is signed off on. Ram­nar­ine ac­knowl­edged that the Saud­is had bid a price for nat­ur­al gas that was 36 per cent be­low the cost price but in­sist­ed it was not the fi­nal fig­ure. "You are damned if you do, and damned if you don't. We just have to move for­ward and de­vel­op the coun­try," Ram­nar­ine told the Guardian.

The Min­is­ter ar­gued that there ap­peared to be an ef­fort to dis­cred­it the work that he has been do­ing "be­cause there are those out there who want my job." But he in­sist­ed that all that he has pur­sued dur­ing his sev­en months in of­fice has been in the in­ter­est of Trinidad and To­ba­go. SABIC beat out 12 oth­er pro­pos­als for the con­struc­tion of the methanol to petro­chem­i­cals com­plex but it was the sole bid­der in the methanol to olefins af­ter two oth­er com­peti­tors were dis­qual­i­fied. It is un­der­stood that this too did not sit well with Seep­er­sad-Bachan who ques­tioned whether in the cir­cum­stances the methanol to olefins project ought to be put out again for bids. Ram­nar­ine shrugged this off in­sist­ing since he has tak­en of­fice no one can with any truth point a fin­ger at him. "I don't even meet with in­vestors with­out hav­ing my pub­lic of­fi­cers around be­cause I want to en­sure that not on­ly is there al­ways trans­paren­cy but there is the ap­pear­ance of it."

SABIC is one of the world's lead­ing man­u­fac­tur­ers of chem­i­cals, fer­til­iz­ers, plas­tics and met­als and in 2010 had net in­come, sales rev­enue and to­tal as­sets of US $5.5 bil­lion, US $40.5 bil­lion and US $84.5 bil­lion re­spec­tive­ly. This is the same project that Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad Bisses­sar al­lud­ed to when, on her re­turn from In­dia, she promised an an­nounce­ment in the near fu­ture on a project that had moved from US$2 bil­lion to over US$4 bil­lion. The Cab­i­net Note puts the projects at US$5.3 bil­lion.