Gail Alexan­der

For­mer prime min­is­ter Stu­art Young and En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal clashed in Par­lia­ment on Fri­day over Young's query about whether Can­dy Ro­get-Mar­tinez, who was hired at Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Ltd, had OW­TU Pres­i­dent Gen­er­al An­cel Ro­get as a ref­er­ence for her ap­pli­ca­tion.

Mooni­lal protest­ed Young "rais­ing ques­tions of peo­ple's fa­ther".

This was af­ter Young asked Mooni­lal a se­ries of ques­tions con­cern­ing Ro­get-Mar­tinez be­ing hired at Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed in a hu­man re­source po­si­tion, HR Busi­ness Sup­port An­a­lyst (on con­tract).

Young asked what her qual­i­fi­ca­tions for that po­si­tion were; what job ex­pe­ri­ence she had in the re­spec­tive area of work; and whether the po­si­tion was ad­ver­tised and sub­ject to a com­pet­i­tive re­cruit­ment process.

Mooni­lal said Her­itage con­firmed that the po­si­tion was an ap­proved con­tract po­si­tion to be filled to sup­port re­cruit­ment and HR project ac­tiv­i­ties at Her­itage.

He added, "Ms Ro­get-Mar­tinez holds a Bach­e­lor of Sci­ence in Psy­chol­o­gy (Ma­jor) and In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions (Mi­nor) from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies; a Mas­ter of Busi­ness Ad­min­is­tra­tion spe­cialised in Hu­man Re­source Man­age­ment from No­va South­east­ern Uni­ver­si­ty, and a Mas­ter of Arts in Con­flict Pre­ven­tion and Dis­pute Res­o­lu­tion (2013) from the Uni­ver­si­ty of West­min­ster.

"In ad­di­tion, she's cer­ti­fied as a Glob­al Pro­fes­sion­al in Hu­man Re­sources. Ms Ro­get-Mar­tinez met and ex­ceed­ed the min­i­mum qual­i­fi­ca­tion re­quire­ments out­lined in the ad­ver­tise­ment for the po­si­tion," Mooni­lal added.

"Ms Ro­get-Mar­tinez is an HR Pro­fes­sion­al with over sev­en years of work­ing ex­pe­ri­ence in Tal­ent Ac­qui­si­tion and Hu­man Re­sources, with core ex­per­tise in lead­ing full-cy­cle re­cruit­ment, on­board­ing and en­gage­ment process­es. She met the min­i­mum ex­pe­ri­ence re­quire­ments out­lined in the ad­ver­tise­ment for the po­si­tion."

Mooni­lal said Her­itage con­firmed that the post was ad­ver­tised from De­cem­ber 3 to De­cem­ber 9, 2025, via its web­site, so­cial me­dia plat­forms and the Ex­press. "This re­cruit­ment process was con­duct­ed in ac­cor­dance with the Com­pa­ny's es­tab­lished poli­cies and pro­ce­dures."

Young asked how many peo­ple ap­plied for the po­si­tion. But Mooni­lal said he didn't have that in­for­ma­tion since it wasn't part of Young's core ques­tion.

Young asked if Ro­get-Mar­tinez was pre­vi­ous­ly em­ployed at Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gy Ser­vices, the new com­pa­ny the OW­TU formed this term to restart the Petrotrin re­fin­ery. Mooni­lal said he didn't have her CV but would find out.

Young then asked, with re­spect to ref­er­ences Ro­get-Mar­tinez pro­vid­ed when she ap­plied for the job, whether she had OW­TU Pres­i­dent Gen­er­al An­cel Ro­get as a ref­er­ence.

Mooni­lal said, "I'm re­al­ly flab­ber­gast­ed that this MP is rais­ing ques­tions of peo­ple's fa­ther - this is a for­mer Cab­i­net Min­is­ter who dad­dy was the chair­man of a state en­ti­ty! And San Fer­nan­do East Bowji was a con­sul­tant at the NGC...at the NEC."

Young de­mand­ed, "What is the an­swer to the ques­tion...how many wives and...!"

Mooni­lal said Ro­get-Mar­tinez's CV was not in his pos­ses­sion. "So I can­not re­al­ly tell him the ref­er­ences..." Mooni­lal al­so an­swered Young's oth­er queries on NGC

Nom­i­na­tion for Ben­jamin to act as CoP now laid

Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der on Fri­day laid in Par­lia­ment the nom­i­na­tion from the Pres­i­dent for Deputy Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Ju­nior Ben­jamin's act­ing ap­point­ment as Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er.

Alexan­der gave no de­tails. How­ev­er, front­line Min­is­ters said the nom­i­na­tion per­tained to when Ben­jamin had act­ed as CoP in Au­gust dur­ing the ab­sence of CoP Al­lis­ter Guev­er­ro, who was on emer­gency leave over­seas af­ter re­ceiv­ing sen­si­tive in­for­ma­tion from the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA) and Spe­cial Branch.

Op­po­si­tion MP Mar­vin Gon­za­les had ques­tioned Guev­er­ro's de­par­ture and Ben­jamin's act­ing ap­point­ment with­out the nor­mal process. It was, how­ev­er, not­ed then that Par­lia­ment was on the mid-year re­cess and had not been meet­ing to un­der­take de­bates.

NGC hasn't changed gas al­lo­ca­tion to Pt Lisas cus­tomers - Mooni­lal

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Mooni­lal has said the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny has not changed its al­lo­ca­tion of gas to petro­chem­i­cal cus­tomers at the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate and isn't aware of any di­ver­sion of gas from those cus­tomers to the At­lantic LNG Fa­cil­i­ty.

But there have al­so been 20 sep­a­rate down­stream plant up­sets at the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate, which re­sult­ed in af­fect­ed plants ei­ther be­ing shut down or op­er­at­ing be­low their con­trac­tu­al gas en­ti­tle­ments for rea­sons un­re­lat­ed to gas avail­abil­i­ty.

Mooni­lal was re­spond­ing in Par­lia­ment to MP Young's queries about why there was a change to the na­tion­al nat­ur­al gas al­lo­ca­tion pol­i­cy, di­vert­ing gas from the petro­chem­i­cal cus­tomers at Pt Lisas to At­lantic LNG, and re­lat­ed ques­tions, in­clud­ing where Cab­i­net was con­cerned.

Mooni­lal said it was "quite iron­ic" the ques­tion was be­ing asked, "by per­sons who, when they were in charge of the en­er­gy sec­tor, took no mean­ing­ful steps to se­cure a guar­an­teed sup­ply of gas to the down­stream petro­chem­i­cal sec­tor".

He added, "The gov­ern­ment's pol­i­cy is di­a­met­ri­cal­ly op­posed to that which ex­ist­ed pre­vi­ous­ly un­der those op­po­site. Since April 2025, the NGC has been tak­ing pos­i­tive and mean­ing­ful steps to re­verse the dam­age to the down­stream petro­chem­i­cal sec­tor that was done by (PNM), and we're to­day see­ing the re­sult of those ini­tia­tives."

"NGC has not changed its al­lo­ca­tion of gas to petro­chem­i­cal cus­tomers at the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate and is not aware of any di­ver­sion of gas from those cus­tomers to the At­lantic LNG Fa­cil­i­ty. As the sole ag­gre­ga­tor of nat­ur­al gas for the do­mes­tic mar­ket, NGC has ful­ly met its con­trac­tu­al gas sup­ply oblig­a­tions to all do­mes­tic cus­tomers (in­clud­ing petro­chem­i­cal, non-petro­chem­i­cal, light in­dus­tri­al, com­mer­cial and pow­er gen­er­a­tion cus­tomers) from 2025 through 2026. Dur­ing the same pe­ri­od, NGC has al­so con­tin­ued to sat­is­fy its en­ti­tle­ment oblig­a­tions to the At­lantic Fa­cil­i­ty."

Mooni­lal said down­stream petro­chem­i­cal cus­tomers were re­newed in 2026.

"Un­der the re­newed GSCs, the dai­ly con­tract quan­ti­ties (DC­Qs) were main­tained at lev­els con­sis­tent with those in the pre­ced­ing con­tracts and, in sev­er­al in­stances, were in­creased above pre­vi­ous­ly con­tract­ed vol­umes. No­tably, the GSC for NGC's largest petro­chem­i­cal cus­tomer by vol­ume was re­newed with a DCQ ap­prox­i­mate­ly 16% high­er than that pro­vid­ed un­der the ex­pired con­tract."

He added, "Since Jan­u­ary 2026, there have been 20 sep­a­rate down­stream plant up­sets at the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate (ex­clud­ing Nu­trien). These events re­sult­ed in af­fect­ed plants ei­ther be­ing shut down or op­er­at­ing be­low their con­trac­tu­al gas en­ti­tle­ments for rea­sons un­re­lat­ed to gas avail­abil­i­ty.

"NGC ex­pe­ri­enced two gas sup­ply-re­lat­ed con­straints dur­ing 2026, on­ly one of which re­sult­ed in cur­tail­ments to petro­chem­i­cal cus­tomers.

"De­spite these con­straints, NGC de­liv­ered gas at the con­tract­ed DCQ lev­el in ac­cor­dance with the GSCs on ap­prox­i­mate­ly 95% of days dur­ing the year. Petro­chem­i­cal cus­tomers re­ceived sup­plies be­low their con­trac­tu­al en­ti­tle­ments on on­ly 5% of days, aris­ing from a sin­gle gas sup­ply con­straint as­so­ci­at­ed with a planned up­stream ac­tiv­i­ty that was co­or­di­nat­ed with the At­lantic Train 4 sched­uled turn­around.

"More­over, since Jan­u­ary 2026, petro­chem­i­cal cus­tomers have, in ag­gre­gate, re­ceived gas vol­umes ap­prox­i­mate­ly 33% above their con­trac­tu­al en­ti­tle­ments. This fig­ure ex­cludes one cus­tomer whose gas off­take was con­strained by plant-re­lat­ed op­er­a­tional is­sues."

He added, "Ac­cord­ing­ly, the avail­able da­ta demon­strates that petro­chem­i­cal cus­tomers at the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate con­sis­tent­ly re­ceived gas sup­plies at or above their con­tract­ed DC­Qs through­out 2026. NGC met or ex­ceed­ed its con­trac­tu­al sup­ply oblig­a­tions on ap­prox­i­mate­ly 95% of all days dur­ing the year, and there's no ev­i­dence that gas al­lo­cat­ed to petro­chem­i­cal cus­tomers was redi­rect­ed to the At­lantic LNG Fa­cil­i­ty."