Gail Alexan­der

Act­ing En­er­gy Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert is in­ter­ven­ing in ne­go­ti­a­tions be­tween Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny and Unipet aim­ing to bro­ker a speedy agree­ment be­tween both in their cur­rent im­passe.

He said Unipet cur­rent­ly owes Paria over $100 mil­lion for fu­el sup­plied with­out any writ­ten agree­ment.

Speak­ing in the Sen­ate yes­ter­day, Im­bert added, “NP has the ca­pac­i­ty to sup­ply fu­el but I in­tend to in­ter­vene and see if I can get this mat­ter re­solved in the short­est pos­si­ble time and get the par­ties back to­geth­er so we can pro­duce a prop­er agree­ment be­tween Paria and Unipet go­ing for­ward with­out any dif­fi­cul­ties.”

Im­bert was re­ply­ing to queries from UNC Sen­a­tor Wade Mark on the im­passe be­tween Paria and Unipet af­ter Paria on Tues­day dis­con­tin­ued sup­ply­ing Unipet with fu­el.

Paria has stat­ed this re­sult­ed from Paria’s fail­ure to rene­go­ti­ate a sup­ply agree­ment since April and that Unipet de­fault­ed on pay­ments owed from Sep­tem­ber and Oc­to­ber de­liv­er­ies. Unipet ac­cused Paria to be “push­ing the mar­ket to­ward a mo­nop­oly sit­u­a­tion.”

Pe­tro­le­um Deal­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Robin Narayns­ingh who said Paria’s move was “un­fair and un­just” has called on Im­bert and Gov­ern­ment to in­ter­vene. He warned of threats to jobs re­sult­ing from the sit­u­a­tion. Yes­ter­day some mo­torists com­plained of fu­el prob­lems.

Im­bert, re­ply­ing to Mark’s con­cern about the im­pact, said, “This is an is­sue of non-pay­ment for sup­ply. It’s an is­sue of non-sig­na­to­ry of an agree­ment which has been in force for sev­er­al months.

“As act­ing En­er­gy Min­is­ter it’s my in­ten­tion to in­ter­vene. How­ev­er, we have to en­sure that any­body who’d sup­plied with fu­el that is paid for by tax­pay­ers, pays their bills and pays them on time.”

Im­bert said Paria which is the whole­sale sup­pli­er of mo­tor­ing fu­els and Unipet is cur­rent­ly in­volved in ne­go­ti­a­tions “And it’s ex­pect­ed the im­passe will be of short du­ra­tion min­imis­ing any dis­rup­tion to the mo­tor­ing pub­lic.”

Say­ing there was no break­down of ne­go­ti­a­tions, he added, “What hap­pened was, when Paria was formed last year three was a short term writ­ten con­tract put in place with Unipet. That ex­pired in March. Since then - April, May, June, Ju­ly, Au­gust, Sep­tem­ber and Oc­to­ber, the arrange­ment be­tween Paria and Unipet has been by way of a month­ly arrange­ment ex­e­cut­ed via let­ter on the same terms and pre­vi­ous arrange­ment - re­gard­ing cred­it and so on - signed be­tween both sides.”

Im­bert added, “Be­tween April and Oc­to­ber Unipet signed the let­ter and ad­hered to the cred­it terms for the sup­ply of fu­el which are, in the first in­stance, 45 days and then it goes to 55 days from the first sup­ply of fu­el,”

“In No­vem­ber, Paria sent the usu­al month­ly let­ter to Unipet for its sig­na­ture, Unipet de­clined to sign the let­ter and Unipet was giv­en fu­el in good faith by Paria. Unipet de­clined to pay for fu­el and it owed Paria $172 mil­lion as of a cou­ple weeks ago. Paria and Unipet met and Unipet agreed to make a part pay­ment of $68 mil­lion, how­ev­er, it on­ly paid $64 mil­lion and it has still de­clined to sign any writ­ten agree­ment with Paria and it now owes Paria in ex­cess of $100 mil­lion for fu­el sup­plied with­out any writ­ten agree­ment.”

On the pos­si­ble im­pact on mo­torists, Im­bert said “I’m ad­vised NP present­ly has a net­work of 117 op­er­at­ing ser­vice sta­tions which are strate­gi­cal­ly lo­cat­ed through­out the length and breadth of T&T.

“Unipet has 24 op­er­at­ing ser­vice sta­tions which are pri­mar­i­ly lo­cat­ed in dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed ar­eas al­so served by NP ser­vice sta­tions. I’m fur­ther ad­vised that NP has the ex­ist­ing ca­pac­i­ty and ca­pa­bil­i­ty to meet the fu­el re­quire­ments of the mo­tor­ing pub­lic and ad­di­tion­al re­sources have been put in place in terms of the sup­ply and de­liv­ery of fu­el at NP ser­vice sta­tions to deal with any is­sues that arise.”

UNC’s Mark called for the is­sue to be de­bat­ed as a mat­ter of ur­gent na­tion­al im­por­tance. He not­ed Unipet had sev­er­al ser­vice sta­tions and was an al­ter­na­tive source of fu­el for thou­sands and po­ten­tial clo­sure would pose a sig­nif­i­cant in­con­ve­nience to mo­torists and the wider pub­lic - in­clud­ing cre­at­ing a mo­nop­oly and job­less­ness. Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo said it didn’t qual­i­fy for de­bate un­der the reg­u­la­tion Mark had filed it.