The To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly is pre­pared to take the Gov­ern­ment to court over its fail­ure to grant a full min­ing li­cence for the is­land’s Stud­ley Park Quar­ry, ac­cord­ing to THA Sec­re­tary of In­fra­struc­ture, Quar­ries and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Trevor James.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that the THA and the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries have dif­fer­ing le­gal in­ter­pre­ta­tions of roy­al­ties to be paid on quar­ry sales. THA Sec­re­tary James said the mat­ter is like­ly to be re­solved be­fore the courts.

James ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of sud­den­ly ex­press­ing con­cern about roy­al­ties and au­dit­ing prac­tices at Stud­ley Park En­ter­prise Lim­it­ed, the com­pa­ny that man­ages the quar­ry, af­ter the PNM was oust­ed by the PDP from the THA in De­cem­ber 2021.

Ac­cord­ing to James, un­der the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion, SPEL failed to com­plete an au­dit of the com­pa­ny. He said the com­pa­ny is not prof­itable and re­quires state sub­ven­tions.

He al­so com­plained that, un­der the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion, the op­er­a­tors of an­oth­er quar­ry were al­lowed to op­er­ate in To­ba­go with­out pay­ing a cent in roy­al­ties, yet, the Gov­ern­ment is tak­ing is­sue with SPEL over the Stud­ley Park Quar­ry.

The Gov­ern­ment’s in­ter­pre­ta­tion is that the own­ers of all quar­ries, in­clud­ing To­ba­go quar­ries, must pay roy­al­ties to the cen­tral Gov­ern­ment.

How­ev­er, ac­cord­ing to James, the THA dis­agrees. In­stead, he said, roy­al­ties from To­ba­go quar­ries should go to the THA and thus the Gov­ern­ment is not owed roy­al­ties from the quar­ry - part of the Gov­ern­ment’s stat­ed rea­son for the de­lay in grant­i­ng SPEL a Min­ing Li­cense.

Ac­cord­ing to James, the THA’s in­ter­pre­ta­tion is based on the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Act, which the THA be­lieves, sets aside the Ex­che­quer and Au­dit Act. He said the THA al­so is con­vinced that Sec­tion 22(G) of the Min­er­als Act 2000, which states that “The li­censee shall pay to the Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary of the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries the fees, roy­al­ties, rents, and any oth­er pay­ments he is re­quired to pay in re­spect of such li­cence,” does not set aside the THA or Ex­che­quer Acts.

Sec­tion 13 of the Ex­che­quer and Au­dit Act 1959 states that “All rev­enue shall be paid, at such times and in such man­ner as the Trea­sury may di­rect, in­to the Ex­che­quer Ac­count and the rev­enue shall form the Con­sol­i­dat­ed Fund.” 

The Act de­fines rev­enues as all tolls, du­ties, fees, li­cences, tax­es, im­ports, roy­al­ties, rents, penal­ties, for­fei­tures, dues and all oth­er re­ceipts of the State.

How­ev­er, Sec­tion 49 (1) of the THA Act states that “Notwith­stand­ing sec­tion 13 of the Ex­che­quer and Au­dit Act, all rev­enue col­lect­ed in To­ba­go on be­half of the Gov­ern­ment and payable there­to in re­spect of ac­tiv­i­ties un­der­tak­en or dis­charged in To­ba­go shall be paid in­to the (To­ba­go) Fund.”

Ac­cord­ing to En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries Min­istry sources, the Stud­ley Park Quar­ry, owned by the THA, is not one of the coun­try’s 12 li­censed quar­ries. This, in turn, brings in­to ques­tion the le­gal­i­ty of ma­te­r­i­al be­ing used by con­trac­tors on the ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Ex­pan­sion Project.

Ac­cord­ing to the Min­er­als Act, an or­gan­i­sa­tion re­quires a Min­ing Li­cence to ex­tract ma­te­r­i­al from any prop­er­ty. Any or­gan­i­sa­tion found guilty of ex­tract­ing ma­te­r­i­al with­out a min­er­al li­cence is li­able to a fine of $500,000 and five years im­pris­on­ment. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, any or­gan­i­sa­tion found guilty of know­ing­ly pur­chas­ing il­le­gal ma­te­r­i­al is al­so li­able to face the same penal­ty.

A Guardian Me­dia in­ves­ti­ga­tion re­vealed that ma­te­r­i­al from the quar­ry is be­ing used by con­trac­tors, in­clud­ing Warn­er Con­struc­tion and San­i­ta­tion Lim­it­ed, to make con­crete for the ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Ex­pan­sion Project.

How­ev­er, con­trary to the po­si­tion of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries sources, Trevor James and Stud­ley Park En­ter­prise Lim­it­ed (SPEL) Chair­man Ash­worth Jack said that SPEL was grant­ed a pro­vi­sion­al li­cense. 

Guardian Me­dia, told by En­er­gy Min­istry sources that the li­cense ex­pired, asked both men for ev­i­dence of a valid pro­vi­sion­al li­cence but did not re­ceive it.

In May 2023, James ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of at­tempt­ing to un­der­mine Stud­ley Park and SPEL’s op­er­a­tions by with­hold­ing a min­ing li­cence.

In re­sponse, En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries Min­is­ter Stu­art Young called James’ claims “base­less”, back then.

“Min­er­als Au­dits form a vi­tal tool in the checks and bal­ances of the ver­i­fi­ca­tion sys­tem for de­ter­min­ing rev­enues owed to the State. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, no li­cense to mine or process should be grant­ed un­til ver­i­fi­ca­tion of the sta­tus of all out­stand­ing roy­al­ties owed to the State has been ex­e­cut­ed. This au­dit ex­er­cise which is on­go­ing has un­for­tu­nate­ly been ham­pered by the lack of records pre­sent­ed by SPEL,” Young said.

In May 2023, a Guardian Me­dia in­ves­ti­ga­tion found that some of T&T’s es­tab­lished con­struc­tion and ag­gre­gate com­pa­nies were among 57 firms and in­di­vid­u­als fined for il­le­gal quar­ry­ing. 

These com­pa­nies are al­so among 44 il­le­gal min­ing op­er­a­tions to be closed/shut down since Jan­u­ary 2020, ac­cord­ing to doc­u­ments ob­tained from the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy Af­fairs.

The doc­u­ments were re­ceived via a let­ter in April through a Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act re­quest by the Sun­day Guardian in Jan­u­ary 2023.

Ac­cord­ing to a source at one of the fined com­pa­nies—state-owned Na­tion­al Quar­ries Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (NQ­CL)—the to­tal fines paid by their com­pa­ny are in the mil­lions. 

The source and oth­er in­dus­try sources said the il­le­gal quar­ry­ing in­dus­try was worth bil­lions of dol­lars.

As of Jan­u­ary 2020, ac­cord­ing to an Ex­trac­tive In­dus­tries Trans­paren­cy Ini­tia­tive Coun­try Re­port on T&T, quar­ry op­er­a­tors owed the Gov­ern­ment $193 mil­lion in roy­al­ty pay­ments.

Among the com­pa­nies ow­ing roy­al­ties is the state-owned Na­tion­al Quar­ries. A com­pa­ny source, in May 2023, es­ti­mat­ed owed roy­al­ties to be around $35 mil­lion to $55 mil­lion as of 2022.

As of Ju­ly 2024, Na­tion­al Quar­ries was not li­cenced to quar­ry.

Ac­cord­ing to the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice, the con­struc­tion and quar­ry­ing in­dus­try ac­count­ed for ap­prox­i­mate­ly $22.65 bil­lion of the coun­try’s Gross Do­mes­tic Prod­uct be­tween the years 2000 to 2004.

Young on Stud­ley Park

Speak­ing dur­ing a Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries news con­fer­ence on Thurs­day, Min­is­ter Stu­art Young said a “grace pe­ri­od” was grant­ed so that the or­gan­i­sa­tion could get its “house in or­der.”

“There were some re­quire­ments that had to be ful­filled by the THA con­trolled, Stud­ley Park. Ini­tial­ly, there may have been some re­luc­tance on their part.

“I’m be­ing told by the Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary of the Min­istry of En­er­gy that they were pro­vid­ed with, I don’t want to call it a let­ter of com­fort, but maybe a sort of let­ter of au­tho­riza­tion so that they pro­ceed with their qual­i­ty ac­tiv­i­ties for a pe­ri­od of time whilst they get their house in or­der and do what was be­ing asked of them,” Young said.