GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Se­nior Re­porter

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

A po­lit­i­cal war of words has erupt­ed over doc­u­men­ta­tion linked to the Drag­on Gas Project, with En­er­gy Min­is­ter Roodal Mooni­lal ac­cus­ing for­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Stu­art Young of neg­li­gence and mal­ad­min­is­tra­tion, while Young has fired back, dis­miss­ing the claims as dis­hon­est and urg­ing the Gov­ern­ment to seek copies of the agree­ments from par­ties in­volved in the project.

The dis­pute fol­lows a news re­lease from the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries, which said it has found no ex­e­cut­ed agree­ment in Eng­lish and no records, whether in Eng­lish or Span­ish, deal­ing with fis­cal mea­sure­ment or me­ter­ing arrange­ments for the Drag­on Gas Project.

“To date, no orig­i­nal ex­e­cut­ed agree­ments have been lo­cat­ed with­in the min­istry’s records as it re­lates to the Drag­on Field. Fur­ther­more, no copies of Eng­lish trans­lat­ed ver­sions of any agree­ments as it re­lates to the Drag­on Field ex­ist in the min­istry’s records.

“Agree­ments were ex­e­cut­ed in De­cem­ber 2023, did not re­sult in the dis­cov­ery of orig­i­nal ex­e­cut­ed agree­ments in ei­ther lan­guage, or even copies of fi­nalised, ex­e­cut­ed ver­sions in Eng­lish. A fur­ther ex­am­i­na­tion of the Min­istry’s records iden­ti­fied a Cab­i­net Note dat­ed Jan­u­ary 2024, with a copy of the ex­e­cut­ed Fis­cal Mea­sure­ment Agree­ment in Span­ish ap­pend­ed. While this at­tach­ment pro­vides a record of the signed ex­e­cut­ed Agree­ment in Span­ish it does not re­solve the ab­sence of the orig­i­nal ex­e­cut­ed agree­ment or es­tab­lish that an Eng­lish-lan­guage ver­sion was al­so ex­e­cut­ed,” the re­lease said.

The ex­change marks the lat­est con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing the Drag­on Gas Project, a piv­otal ini­tia­tive in­tend­ed to bring nat­ur­al gas from Venezuela’s Drag­on field to T&T.

The project has long been viewed as crit­i­cal to boost­ing do­mes­tic gas sup­plies and sup­port­ing the coun­try’s down­stream en­er­gy sec­tor at a time of de­clin­ing nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion.

How­ev­er, Young re­ject­ed the crit­i­cism, ac­cus­ing Mooni­lal of at­tempt­ing to cre­ate a con­tro­ver­sy over records that could eas­i­ly be ob­tained from the par­ties di­rect­ly in­volved in the ne­go­ti­a­tions.

He ac­cused Mooni­lal as “des­per­ate­ly try­ing to hold on­to the Min­is­ter of En­er­gy po­si­tion” and urged him to pur­sue what he de­scribed as sim­ple and ob­vi­ous av­enues to ob­tain the rel­e­vant doc­u­ments.

Young main­tained that the agree­ments were ex­e­cut­ed in Span­ish and that Eng­lish trans­la­tions ex­ist­ed.

He sug­gest­ed that if the min­istry could not lo­cate copies, it should re­quest them from the Venezue­lan Gov­ern­ment, the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny of T&T (NGC), the lawyers who ad­vised on and set­tled the agree­ments, or Shell, which par­tic­i­pat­ed in and signed agree­ments con­nect­ed to the project.

“If the Min­istry of En­er­gy is claim­ing that they can­not find agree­ments to do with the Drag­on Gas Field, here is some com­mon sense ad­vice (for free): ask the Venezue­lan Gov­ern­ment for copies – the agree­ments were all ex­e­cut­ed in Span­ish, and there were Eng­lish trans­la­tions. But I guess you all not at that stage of re­la­tion­ship that you can ask any­one in Venezuela; b) ask NGC,” Young said.

Mooni­lal yes­ter­day de­scribed Young’s claims as “ap­palling,” ar­gu­ing that it was un­ac­cept­able that agree­ments in­volv­ing hun­dreds of mil­lions of US dol­lars could have pro­ceed­ed with­out a ver­i­fied and cer­ti­fied Eng­lish trans­la­tion be­ing avail­able.