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A & V Oil and Gas Ltd has failed in two successive attempts to obtain an injunction blocking State owned Petrotrin from terminating its agreement and withholding a $83 million payment over allegations of inflated billings.
Last Monday, A&V filed a lawsuit against Petrotrin over the issue and applied for an injunction against it.
Two days later, High Court judge Avason Quinlan-Williams refused as she ruled that A&V had failed to prove that Petrotrin was not entitled to take such action.
In her seven-page decision, Quinlan-Williams said: “A&V did not satisfy the court that they have a real prospect of success in succeeding in its claim that Petrotrin wilfully terminated the contract and withheld the sum of $83,929,671.34.”
She also said that A&V’s CEO Haniff Nizam Baksh had admitted that under the terms of the agreement, Petrotrin was entitled to withhold the money, which is close to the figure which it claims it overpaid A&V.
A&V filed an appeal and sought an interim injunction pending its determination. A chamber court hearing was held yesterday morning with only the parties’ lawyers and representatives being allowed inside. It ended with Appeal Court judge Prakash Moosai upholding Quinlan-Williams’ decision.
In her decision, Quinlan-Williams said that Petrotrin was justified based on the findings of internal and external audit reports.
“Applying an objective test of what reasonable grounds means Petrotrin had reasonable grounds for suspecting that A&V had misconducted itself based on the information contained in the internal audit report,” Quinlan-Williams said.
She rejected A&V’s claim that Petrotrin was required to disclose the external reports, prepared by global oil and gas consultants Gaffney Cline and Kroll Consulting, as she said that they were privilege information.
She suggested that it was also not entitled to the injunction as the contract contained a multi-tiered and explicit dispute resolution process which includes negotiation, mitigation and arbitration.
Avason-Quinlan noted that the parties were still locked in the negotiation stage. She said that she felt that there would be no adequate remedy to compensate Petrotrin, if the injunction was granted and it (Petrotrin) eventually won its dispute with A&V.
As part of the rulings, A&V was ordered to pay Petrotrin’s legal costs for both. A&V is being represented by Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj, SC, Ronnie Bissessar, Vijaya Maharaj and Varin Gopaul-Gosine. Deborah Peake, SC, Ravi Heffes-Doon and Marcelle Ferdinand are representing Petrotrin.
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In 2009, A&V was granted a 10 year licence from Petrotrin to operate its onshore oil fields in Catskills, Moruga.
The scandal involving the two companies was first raised in September, last year, by Opposition Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar, who revealed that Petrotrin’s internal audit had shown that A&V inflated its crude oil production figures leading to over-payments.
She also questioned the link between the company’s owner Haniff Nizam Baksh and Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley.
Rowley admitted to knowing Baksh and contacting him when the news broke, but has denied any wrongdoing.
Baksh and his son-in-law Billy Ramsundar, who is a police corporal, have been charged with assaulting the T&T Guardian’s senior photographer Kristian Da Silva and destroying his camera valued at US$1,600.
The incident occurred on September 15, while Da Silva was on taking photographs of the company’s headquarters at Nizam Avenue, San Francique.