THE Steering Committee set up by Prime Minister Bruce Golding to review the operations of the Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) project tender process under former energy minister James Robertson has recommended that the tender process be cancelled and that a new tender be issued.

The 11-member committee, chaired by Christopher Zacca, also recommended that the new tender process should be improved by observing the industry standard of at least 90 days for RFP (request for proposal) responses, instead of the 54 days allowed under the original process.

In a report to Golding and copied to Robertson, Finance Minister Audley Shaw, Transport Minister Mike Henry and junior energy minister Laurence Broderick, the committee said that its review led it to conclude that “the November 2009 RFP was seriously flawed and that it does not rise to the level of a fair and transparent process required by the Government of Jamaica’s procurement guidelines and good industry practice”.

The committee completed its report on April 13, well over a month before Contractor General Greg Christie submitted the results of his own probe to Parliament.

Christie arrived at similar conclusions about the tender process and has even gone further to refer his report to the Director of Public Prosecution and the commissioner of police for further action.

The LNG Steering Committee, in its report, said it had sought legal opinions from external counsel, Livingston Alexander & Levy as well as from Solicitor General Douglas Leys.

“The purpose of these legal opinions was to determine if the tender process met the requirements of the Government of Jamaica’s procurement guidelines,” the committee said.

It said it decided to join with the board of the Petroleum Corporation of Jamaica (PCJ) to review the circumstances surrounding the tender process, given the contractor general’s probe into the matter and following on accusations by Stephen Wedderburn, the LNG project co-ordinator for the PCJ.

Wedderburn, the committee said, had alleged that the Linkedin profile of Joseph Fossella, the project’s LNG technical and commercial consultant, was subject to felonious hacking.

The committee said the flaws it identified were contrary to the Government’s procurement guidelines and arbitrarily excluded qualified companies from being able to participate.

“This resulted in an inadequate number of fully-compliant and competitive bid submissions being received,” the Steering Committee said.

“As the LNG project is critical to the future of the Jamaican economy, this must be resolved in order to have credibility in the eyes of the international participants and the Jamaican public, as well as to have an opportunity for a more competitively priced and appropriately designed technical solution for this project,” the committee added.

In early 2010, Robertson announced the Government’s intention to diversify the island’s energy sources via the establishment of a floating regasification unit to process imported liquified gas. He said then that the change would save approximately US$350 million on the country’s annual oil bill.

A consortium comprising local consultant company Caribbean LNG Jamaica, Belgian company Exmar and Colombian gas distribution firm, Promigas, was given the nod to implement the million-dollar project.

But the project has been hit with controversy with accusations of conflict of interest and questions of bias relating to the tender process.

Golding eventually yanked the project from Robertson, placing it in the Office of the Prime Minister. However, Robertson said at the time that the plan was for him to take the project to a certain level then hand it over to the PM’s office. He also said that he would still be involved in the project.

Last week, however, Robertson resigned from the Cabinet after confirming a Sunday Observer report that his United States visa was revoked by the American Embassy.

It emerged last week as well, that the legal opinions sought from outside counsel by the LNG Steering Committee basically coincided with those of the committee.

The outside counsel, as well as the committee, said that e-mails and other documents indicated that Wedderburn showed “bias in favour of Exmar”.

They also said that based on Wedderburn’s “stated pecuniary interest in a project with Exmar”, his presence and active participation in the bid evaluation meetings “compromised the bid evaluation process” for the November 2009 tender process.

The lawyers said too that Ian Moore, who served for a short time as PCJ chairman and who is now a shareholder in Caribbean LNG, was able to put together a strong tender because of his previous position at the PCJ.

That, they said, indicates a lack of transparency and fairness in the process.

But Moore has said there was nothing untoward or biased about the process. “I welcomed from the beginning any and every investigation and it has now gone through a year of investigation by the OCG and is now being referred to another body. I am willing to co-operate with that body and any body that comes along,” Moore told the Observer last week.

Exmar also issued a statement last week, saying that while it needed time to comment on the contractor general’s findings and recommendations, the company was confident that “the consortium’s award as preferred bidder for the project was made with total transparency and in full compliance with Jamaican bidding regulations as well as with international infrastructure project bidding standards and norms.”

Added the company: “At no time prior to or during the selection bidding process did Exmar Marine NV act improperly or in an irregular manner.”