For­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has pushed back against claims by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar that her ad­min­is­tra­tion is re­spon­si­ble for record prof­its at the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC).

In a state­ment re­spond­ing to Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s ad­dress in Par­lia­ment on Fri­day, Row­ley ar­gued the re­port­ed $3.285 bil­lion prof­it for 2025 stems from poli­cies and re­struc­tur­ing car­ried out un­der the pre­vi­ous Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) gov­ern­ment.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar had told Par­lia­ment the fig­ure rep­re­sents the high­est NGC prof­it in 11 years, say­ing, “What they could not do in ten years we did in ten months,” while cred­it­ing what she de­scribed as a “trans­for­ma­tion­al ap­proach” by her ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Row­ley re­ject­ed that claim, ques­tion­ing what ac­tions the cur­rent gov­ern­ment took to dri­ve the in­crease. He point­ed in­stead to ear­li­er ef­forts to re­struc­ture the en­er­gy sec­tor, in­clud­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions in­volv­ing bp and changes with­in At­lantic LNG, which he said helped place the com­pa­ny on a stronger fi­nan­cial foot­ing.

“As the PNM made sig­nif­i­cant progress in these ar­eas of gov­ern­ment and gov­er­nance, David Lee, Mooni­lal, and the UNC were al­ways re­lent­less in op­pos­ing, mis­lead­ing, and at­tempt­ing to un­der­mine all these ef­forts,” Row­ley said.

He al­so ref­er­enced past chal­lenges in se­cur­ing gas sup­ply agree­ments, say­ing in­ter­ven­tion at the lev­el of the Prime Min­is­ter’s of­fice helped bring key stake­hold­ers back to the ta­ble and set the stage for im­proved earn­ings.

Row­ley main­tained the ben­e­fits now be­ing seen are the re­sult of “years of hard work” and sus­tained en­gage­ment un­der the PNM, rather than re­cent pol­i­cy changes.

“Now that we are re­ceiv­ing the ben­e­fit of good gov­er­nance, this dis­hon­est woman is pre­pared to come be­fore the Par­lia­ment and talk such non­sense,” he said, adding that it was “an in­sult to the in­tel­li­gence of the whole na­tion.”

In her ad­dress, Per­sad-Bisses­sar point­ed to pre­vi­ous loss­es at NGC, in­clud­ing $2.1 bil­lion in 2020 and $1.3 bil­lion in 2023, ar­gu­ing the com­pa­ny had suf­fered from poor man­age­ment un­der the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion.

She said the lat­est re­sults re­flect im­proved gov­er­nance, strate­gic di­rec­tion and a new ap­proach to man­ag­ing the coun­try’s en­er­gy re­sources.

Row­ley, how­ev­er, said re­cent po­lit­i­cal nar­ra­tives had shift­ed un­fair­ly, point­ing to past crit­i­cisms of en­er­gy deals.

“They will for­get their call­ing for US sanc­tions against Young and Row­ley for talk­ing to sanc­tioned ‘nar­co traf­fick­er’ Del­cy Ro­driguez,” he said.