Opinion
- Editorial- Commentary
Mary
King : Accountability
in energy
The
Energy Correspondent's "The
Sale of Pelican'',
Business Express, February 20, 2008, in commenting
on the sale of 80 per cent State holding in the
T&T Marine Petroleum Co, (Trintomar) to US
Independent energy company, EOG Resources for some
US$20 million had this to say:
"...
One finds it difficult to understand and equate
the sale of an important State asset
to exploitation efforts by a foreign company.''
In
a report on the sale of the assets the Energy
Minister, Conrad Enill, indicated that the decision
to sell the State's majority share holding was
partly driven by a need to boost exploration to
find new hydro carbon reserves. The Energy Correspondent
claims that this is all that is in the public domain
and even in the Minister's address last week to
the BG Energy luncheon, no mention was made (nor
questions asked I presume) of the sale. The Energy
Correspondent concludes that, "It is another
situation that reinforces calls for greater transparency
on the management of the people's assets.''
I would strengthen this by calling not only for
transparency (i.e. letting the public know the
details of what the Executive is doing) but also
for accountability for what took place.
For
example, was the sale of these assets in the
best financial and strategic interests of the
people
of this country in these days of Peak Oil, where
the world demand for petroleum is outstripping
the supply, and our resources are being depleted?
Sometime ago I wrote an article, "Perils of
Democracy'', Express, November 12, 2007, in which
I claimed that some governments depend on the electoral
support of the uninformed, the fickle and the prejudiced
man and woman who are bereft of the fundamental
ideas as to socio-economic development. Further,
such informed, fickle and prejudiced governments
have no intention of allowing the equally fickle
and prejudiced commoners to tell them what to do.
In other words the man in the street in T&T
is of little concern to the governments with respect
to transparency and accountability for actions
such as the sale of our petroleum assets - let
them play mas! Who then you may ask should be responsible
for demanding this transparency and accountability
- our Parliament? Was this topic raised there recently?
It
must be of concern to the Joint Select Committees
of Parliament since they have been established
by the Constitution to have "oversight" of
the Executive, to make such activities transparent
and hold its officers accountable to the people
by way of Parliament. But to date the appointments
of these parliamentary committees, including
the one-time powerful JSCs, are in limbo - they
are yet to be established by this present administration.
But these committees and the JSCs in particular,
have publicly incurred the wrath of the PNM administration
during the last parliamentary session since they
turned out not to be fickle, uninformed nor prejudiced.
Mr Jeremy Matouk in one of his recent television
programmes on which I was a guest (along with Mr
Victor Hart, chairman of TTTI) said this to me
publicly:
"I
remember a comment .... by a former Minister
who expressed frustration that - every time we
had to get something done we had to go to the Senate
and give an account to Mary King and answer all
kinds of stupid questions!''
My response to that was that I hoped that the
Minister did not really think that he was reporting
to Mary King, but to the Parliament of this country,
which has as one of its fundamental roles, the
oversight of the financial activities of the Executive.
Parliament not only approves the Budget but is
bound by the Constitution to oversee its spending.
This demonstrates very succinctly the attitude
of the Executive to any control the Parliament
may wish to exert over it. In the same programme,
Mr Hart insisted that this monitoring and control
must also be exerted by Civil Society, by which
he meant the non-governmental groups that are
also informed, non fickle and non-prejudiced.
I also call on Civil Society to bring this Executive
to account, in particular the Ministers of Energy
and Finance for the sale of these assets. What
these Ministers have sold is what should have been
the flagship of what our people could have been
(and still could be) in the up stream sector were
it not for, according to the Energy Correspondent,
an unfortunate and highly improbable drilling mishap
which resulted in damaged reservoirs and loss of
several production wells. bpTT did not pack up
and sell out because it drilled a dry hole.
My colleague and dear friend, Hamel Legall, would
now be turning in his grave as he witnesses this
lack of faith in ourselves in mastering the petroleum
industry as displayed by this rent seeking Executive.
Mary
King is
a columnist of The Trinidad Express (maryking@tstt.net.tt).
Petroleumworld does not
necessarily share
these views.
This
commentary was originally published by Trinidad Express, Monday,
February 25th 2008. Petroleumworld
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