Act­ing Prime Min­is­ter and En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young has de­fend­ed the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries’ (MEEI) $47.5 mil­lion ex­pen­di­ture on le­gal fees. He al­so em­pha­sised the crit­i­cal role played by in­ter­na­tion­al law firm White and Case LLP in se­cur­ing bil­lions in ad­di­tion­al rev­enue for T&T.

In a What­sApp ex­change with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Young said the pay­ments were tied to the un­prece­dent­ed re­struc­tur­ing of At­lantic LNG (AL­NG), a process he de­scribed as high­ly com­plex and glob­al­ly unique.

“The re­tain­ing of White and Case was for the le­gal sup­port and ad­vice as­so­ci­at­ed with the re­struc­tur­ing of At­lantic LNG and re­lat­ed en­er­gy ne­go­ti­a­tions. This was a five-year process, the first of its kind in the world, which re­quired spe­cif­ic le­gal ex­per­tise,” Young said.

High­light­ing the ben­e­fits of the le­gal in­vest­ment, Young added, “The $47.5 mil­lion was ex­pend­ed over five years, and that sum, plus much more, was re­cov­ered through our ne­go­ti­a­tions. We se­cured ad­di­tion­al share­hold­ing in AL­NG with­out any cash pay­ment, high­er prices for our gas, and in­creased rev­enue for Trinidad and To­ba­go. What was achieved in the AL­NG re­struc­tur­ing was his­toric and di­rect­ly con­tributed to over $18 bil­lion in ad­di­tion­al rev­enue from en­er­gy sec­tor ne­go­ti­a­tions with just two com­pa­nies since 2018.”

Young’s re­sponse came af­ter po­lit­i­cal ac­tivist Mar­sha Walk­er filed for ju­di­cial re­view against the min­istry af­ter re­port­ed de­lays by the min­istry in re­spond­ing to her Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act re­quest.

The mat­ter came up for hear­ing on Mon­day.

Walk­er claimed the FOIA re­quest was sub­mit­ted by her on Au­gust 26, 2022, and ac­knowl­edged by the min­istry on Feb­ru­ary 1, 2023. Her re­quest re­vealed the En­er­gy Min­istry paid over $47 mil­lion to a sin­gle law firm over the past five years. She said it raised con­cerns about trans­paren­cy and the pro­cure­ment prac­tices used for such sub­stan­tial ex­pen­di­tures. 

The in­for­ma­tion showed le­gal fees tied to in­ter­na­tion­al firm White and Case LLP.

Min­is­ter Young stat­ed yes­ter­day that White and Case LLP’s in­volve­ment was in­te­gral, cit­ing their glob­al ex­per­tise and long­stand­ing re­la­tion­ship with T&T.

“The agree­ments we reached have en­sured high­er rev­enues for the coun­try at a time when every dol­lar counts. White and Case’s sup­port was in­te­gral to that suc­cess,” Young said.

Ac­cord­ing to the En­er­gy Min­istry’s dis­clo­sure in the FOIA mat­ter, White and Case LLP re­ceived $47,592,899.42 for le­gal ser­vices ren­dered from Feb­ru­ary 2020 to the present.

Lo­cal law firm Fitzwilliam, Stone, Fur­ness-Smith and Mor­gan was al­so en­gaged for le­gal work be­tween Au­gust 2022 and Jan­u­ary 2023, but the min­istry did not dis­close the mon­ey paid.

En­er­gy Min­istry of­fi­cials al­so clar­i­fied that pub­lic ad­ver­tise­ments for at­tor­neys are not is­sued. It stressed that its se­lec­tion of ex­ter­nal at­tor­neys con­forms to pro­cure­ment reg­u­la­tions, even as ex­emp­tions for le­gal ser­vices al­low for sole-source pro­cure­ment.