Petrotrin’s legal team is still reviewing reports from Kroll and Gaffney, Cline and Associates on oil which was allegedly not supplied by A&V Drilling.
More than two weeks after official reports from the two international companies were handed in, the State-owned energy company is awaiting advice on how to proceed with the matter but is assuring that it will be resolved in the interest of the country.
Petrotrin chairman Wilfred Espinet said it is very critical from the company’s standpoint that the matter be handled properly.
“The most important thing for Petrotrin is to ensure that we protect our ability to get what is due to us,” he told the T&T Guardian on Tuesday.
“If there has been a difference in what we have paid for and what we are supposed to pay for, I do not want Petrotrin to be disadvantaged and to get back whatever it overpaid for.”
While there is public sentiment that the matter is taking too long, Espinet said Petrotrin has moved with urgency to bring in the forensic audit team.
He said: “As soon as we were able to determine that there was consistency with their findings and the findings of the internal audit we went to the public.”
The Kroll and Gaffney Cline reports have been passed to “people with specific competencies to deal with how we should go forward,” he said.
“It is still with them. We have no response from our people yet as to how we should go forward.”
“We as a board very clearly are not going to be party to any sweeping anything under the carpet. We are mindful of the fact that process is more important in this case than being right or wrong. You will appreciate while this may have public interest, my bigger interest in Petrotrin is to ensure that we don’t lose money.”
Espinet said the board is particularly careful about the process and has adopted a very thorough approach and that is why it has not identified eight or nine persons who were implicated and an employee identified in the report has been given every opportunity to come forward and make known what happened. The board was expected to get a report on the status of that employee when it met yesterday.
An internal audit for the period of January to June showed that Petrotrin paid more than $80 million for oil which it had not received from A&V Oil and Gas, the contractor on the Catshill Field. Those findings were confirmed by Canadian forensic consultant Kroll.
Another report commissioned from global oil and gas consultants Gaffney Cline found that the reservoir was not capable of producing the volumes in question.
Based on those findings, the Petrotrin board has asked the company’s Internal Audit Department to widen the scope of the investigation into matters dating back to 2016.
Late Monday night, the Office of the Prime Minister announced that Allyson Baksh, daughter of A & V oil and Gas CEO Haniff Nazim Baksh, had resigned her senatorial position.
Former Energy Minister Kevin Ramnarine said her resignation was inevitable as well as instructive in that it is an admission that all is not well regarding the serious allegations levelled against her father’s company.
The former minister expressed concern at the silence of Minister of Energy Franklin Khan since Petrotrin made public the findings of the Kroll and Gaffney Cline reports 11 days ago.