Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

The Op­po­si­tion has re­newed its call for the Gov­ern­ment to dis­close de­tails of a sup­ply deal be­tween State-owned Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny and Ja­maica’s Petro­jam.

Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) deputy po­lit­i­cal leader and Pointe-a-Pierre MP David Lee made the call while ad­dress­ing the par­ty’s week­ly press brief­ing yes­ter­day morn­ing.

The deal, re­lat­ed to the sup­ply of very low sul­phur fu­el oil used by ships, was re­vealed al­most two weeks ago.

While re­ports from Ja­maica sug­gest­ed that the deal was worth ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$90 mil­lion, Paria is­sued a re­lease last week, in­di­cat­ing that it was worth US$50.2 mil­lion.

It said that the deal was in­tend­ed to bol­ster its lu­cra­tive and for­eign ex­change gen­er­at­ing bunker­ing busi­ness with a six month con­tract re­lat­ed to a max­i­mum to­tal vol­ume of 450,000 bar­rels. It re­ceived its first ship­ment of 50,000 bar­rels last week.

“Part of the arrange­ment with Petro­jam is to se­cure a mar­ket for its fu­el oil while pro­vid­ing Paria with an op­por­tu­ni­ty to sup­ply clean fu­el to the Ja­maican mar­ket. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, this en­deav­our aims to pro­mote CARI­COM trade, though it rep­re­sents a rel­a­tive­ly mod­est por­tion in com­par­i­son to Paria’s to­tal sales vol­ume of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 17.1 mil­lion bar­rels per an­num,” it said.

Lee said his par­ty was con­cerned about the vary­ing re­ports and whether this coun­try had se­cured a bet­ter deal than of­fered by tra­di­tion­al sup­pli­ers. He al­so ques­tioned whether the deal was law­ful­ly pro­cured.

“What was the pro­cure­ment pro­ce­dure used to pro­cure the US$90 mil­lion con­tract with Petro­jam? Re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion or bi­lat­er­al re­la­tions is no ex­cuse to dis­miss our pro­cure­ment laws,” he said.

He ques­tioned whether Petro­jam was re­fin­ing the prod­uct it is ex­port­ing to T&T or re­selling it.

“The Min­is­ter of En­er­gy must dif­fer­en­ti­ate whether the fu­el is be­ing re­fined by Petro­jam or be­ing resold by Petro­jam,” he said.

“If it is be­ing resold by Petro­jam, T&T must know, who is that third par­ty. Is it from a sanc­tioned part­ner or is it from a scrupu­lous deal­er?” he added.

Lee sug­gest­ed that the deal sig­ni­fied that the coun­try had lost its en­er­gy sov­er­eign­ty.

“It’s a true re­flec­tion of how our na­tion has lost its abil­i­ty to be self-suf­fi­cient and its rep­u­ta­tion as the re­gion’s en­er­gy cap­i­tal be­cause this gov­ern­ment mis­man­aged the en­er­gy sec­tor,” Lee said.

He said this was a di­rect re­sult of the gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to shut down and re­struc­ture State en­er­gy com­pa­ny Petrotrin and moth­ball its re­fin­ery in his con­stituen­cy in No­vem­ber, 2018.

Lee point­ed out that the clo­sure of the com­pa­ny was not based on the loss­es in­curred from the re­fin­ery as he not­ed that it made $170 mil­lion in prof­its in its last year of op­er­a­tion. He said it was based on sig­nif­i­cant debt the com­pa­ny in­curred in in­vest­ing in a failed gas-to-liq­uids plant un­der the tenure of for­mer ex­ec­u­tive chair­man Mal­colm Jones.

“We take no pride in the de­struc­tion of this coun­try’s en­er­gy his­to­ry,” he said.

De­fend­ing the deal, last week, Young said it would pro­mote re­la­tions be­tween T&T and Ja­maica.

“It is a pro­mo­tion of our bi­lat­er­al re­la­tion­ship with Ja­maica, of which I’m very proud be­cause they’re a close part­ner of ours, as well as Cari­com. This is what Cari­com is meant to be, as all we’re do­ing is en­sur­ing the prin­ci­ples of Cari­com are car­ried out,” Young said.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley al­so weighed in on the deal at the open­ing of a hous­ing com­mu­ni­ty in San Fer­nan­do on Fri­day. He dis­missed crit­i­cism of the deal as mis­chief.

“Buy­ing and sell­ing fu­el as Paria does—if you see an op­por­tu­ni­ty to buy fu­el from Ja­maica, which is a Cari­com coun­try, which gives you an ad­van­tage of ob­tain­ing from there as op­posed to an ex­ter­nal Cari­com source—what’s wrong with that? Are you im­ply­ing that Paria shouldn’t buy and sell fu­el?” he asked.

“Peo­ple lis­ten to those who don’t know what they are talk­ing about and are just con­cerned about mak­ing mis­chief,” he added.

Lee al­so called on Row­ley and Young to con­sid­er mak­ing an ex-gra­tia pay­ment to the fam­i­lies of four divers, who died in a pipeline tragedy at Paria’s fa­cil­i­ty in 2022.

“Give them com­pen­sa­tion based on what com­mis­sion­er KC Lynch said in his re­port in the com­mis­sion of en­quiry in­to those div­er’s deaths...KC Lynch said you can give com­pen­sa­tion with­out ac­cept­ing li­a­bil­i­ty,” he said.

He not­ed that the UNC was cur­rent­ly work­ing with the fam­i­lies to host a memo­r­i­al on the up­com­ing third an­niver­sary of their deaths.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that the fam­i­lies of three of the four vic­tims and the lone sur­vivor Christo­pher Boodram are pur­su­ing neg­li­gence law­suits over the in­ci­dent af­ter set­tle­ment talks with Paria did not bear any fruit.