We have nothing to hide, says Caribbean LNG (Jamaica)

BY AL EDWARDS

Wednesday, June 30, 2010

LEAD principal of Caribbean LNG (Jamaica) Ian Moore -- who fronts a company registered in the British Virgin Islands and is part of the Exmar Consortium that was recently selected as the preferred bidder by the Government to supply Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) via a storage and regasification floating facility -- is insisting that his company fully complied with the bid process and has done nothing untoward.

Moore was reacting to last week's decision by the Office of the Contractor General (OCG) to go into the offices of both the Petroleum Corporation of Jamaica (PCJ) and the Ministry of Energy and Mining and seize documents and records pertaining to the bid process in response to complaints regarding transparency issues and the involvement of connected parties.

"We have nothing to hide," Moore told the Business Observer in an interview last weekend. "Our company was formed before James Robertson became minister of energy and mining. This initiative is a private concern and has nothing to do with Government. In fact, there are no Government connections."

Moore owns 31.2 per cent of Caribbean LNG, while Paul East and Conrad Kerr -- a principal operating executive -- share another 28.8 per cent.

Two weeks ago, Robertson announced that a consortium of local and foreign investors -- Caribbean LNG (Jamaica) and Exmar -- would be investing US$600 million in an LNG facility that will be located at Port Esquivel, St Catherine.

The investors hope that the facility will supply Jamaica with a cheaper energy source by 2013.

But last week, Contractor General Greg Christie announced that he sent a special audit team to the PCJ and the ministry to take into custody records associated with the procurement processes.

Christie said his decision was based on an anonymous complaint, dated Wednesday, June 16, 2010, from a seemingly knowledgeable source. "The complaint alluded, among other things, to allegations of impropriety and irregularity in the selection of the Exmar Consortium as the 'preferred bidder'," Christie said in a news release.

On Saturday, Moore provided this newspaper with a copy of a letter, dated June 23, 2010, which he said he had copied to Christie and in which he instructed Caribbean LNG's corporate secretary, Coverdale Trust Services Limited -- domiciled in the British Virgin Islands (BVI) -- to furnish all relevant information pertaining to Caribbean LNG to the OCG to further assist it with its inquiries.

The letter reads in part: "The Office of the Contractor General of Jamaica is the statutory body charged with the oversight of government contract activity in Jamaica. From time to time, the OCG makes routine inquiries of entities associated with such activity. In this regard, this letter constitutes your good and sufficient authority to disclose without limitation any and all information that may be required of you by the OCG in respect of Caribbean LNG (BVI) Limited."

The letter goes on to implore the British Virgin Islands company to provide the OCG with copies of documents, whether in hard copy or in digital form, and that the company has informed the OCG of its instructions to the corporate secretary.

"What I am prepared to say is that all the Exmar Consortium members take this matter seriously and are prepared to co-operate fully," Moore told the Business Observer. "The main consortium partners, Exmar and Promigas, have strong oversight groups in Europe and South America respectively so I assure you this matter is treated with the seriousness it deserves.

"When you have foreign direct investment of this size without a government guarantee, you must also understand that the entire consortium would want every I dotted and every T crossed. Therefore, full co-operation goes without saying."

Moore insisted that this was not a contract with the Government of Jamaica and that no taxpayers' money was involved.

The gas, he said, would be supplied to bauxite/alumina operators and other private sector players. He also stressed that he had invested a considerable sum of his own money in the project and that his partners are of impeccable character. He further added that Exmar, which is from Belgium, is perhaps one of the world's best operators of floating vessels providing LNG.

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We have nothing to hide, says Caribbean LNG (Jamaica)