Why is Kenny afraid to talk about Jack Grynberg?

As great as is the temptation to engage her in a couple rounds of tit-for-tat I must resist making a hullaballoo about the August 25 headline from the office of the prime minister’s wunderkind press secretary: “Saint Lucia Wins Another Round!” However, I can’t help wondering about her motives for stating on the one hand that the government of Saint Lucia has won another round in the on-going arbitration with RSM Production Corporation, Jack Grynberg’s Texas-based company, and on the other: “The latest order does not determine which party is correct on these matters. It relates only to the costs of the proceeding”—scheduled to come before the ICSID tribunal in February. How can a process not quite started also be “on-going?”

Could it be the press secretary’s contempt for the collective intelligence of the local media is showing yet again? Could she have counted on our vulnerable “media practitioners” to be blinded by the light of that capitalized “wins another round” headline? To be fair, she clearly states the ICSID’s reasons for granting the petitioners their latest appeal: Jack Grynberg’s refusal to post a guarantee of US$750,000 perchance his breach of contract lawsuit should prove unsuccessful.  

And what if, by some miracle, Saint Lucia should lose? Grynberg is demanding in that happy event, more than half our nation’s annual budget. Grynberg had earlier been ordered by the ICSID to “pay all the advances toward the administrative costs of the arbitration.” The government has chosen not to release the exact figure.

Ms JnPierre-Emmanuel generously added for our edification that the tribunal’s order was a first. Her research had revealed that in all previous ICSID cases the contending parties had each been ordered to pay 50% toward administrative costs. My own exhaustive investigations indicate Jack Grynberg is hardly the kind of guy nice girls would happily take home to meet their mamas—unless of course such nice girls and their mamas were gold diggers with a thing for contentious oilmen.

  The question that has always stumped this particular scribe: Bearing in mind all there is to read on the Internet about Grynberg’s discombobulating idiosyncrasies, especially when dealing with small countries with oil potential, such as Grenada, why did foreign affairs permanent secretary Earl Huntley secretly introduce him to Saint Lucia’s prime minister? Even more perplexing, why did Kenny Anthony, who could quite possibly quote Section 41 of the Saint Lucia Constitution blindfolded, entertain an ostensible scoundrel like Grynberg? 

Why did the prime minister direct Earl Huntley to keep to himself all that had transpired at the secret negotiations related to oil under the sea at Dauphin, and not a related word to Mario Michel, yet alone Philip J. Pierre, and the brothers Odium? Did the prime minister have reasons why he considered Huntley more trustworthy than his Cabinet colleagues?

By Dame Perlette’s own admission, not even the governor-general, who alone is constitutionally authorized to license oil explorations on this Rock of Sages, was let in on the Grynberg deal. This sorry situation remains unchanged to this day. But the Jade’s mama didn’t make no fool. Notice how subtly she suggests in her press release that Grynberg’s lawsuit had resulted from Stephenson King’s resurrection of a contract that her boss had in 2009 pronounced dead and buried?

All of that, while also stating: “The Tribunal’s order summarizes the parties’ claims and defenses, saying that the case arises from an offshore petroleum exploration contract . . . that according to RSM’s position, boundary disputes developed, affecting the exploration area, in particular Martinique, Barbados and Saint Vincent, which allegedly prevented RSM from initiating exploration.”

In other words, Grynberg had given Kenny Anthony certain undertakings, reneged on them, then sat back and never once lifted a finger to fulfill his contract. One wonders: Why didn’t our famously litigious prime minister at this point sue Grynberg for breach of contract? The record shows he not only ratified Grynberg’s complaints without argument, but that he also increased the acreage to be explored, and the life of their contract!

Now here comes the ‘how is me uhn’ part: According to the earlier cited government press release issued on Monday: “RSM also claims that former prime minister Stephenson King signed a three-year extension to the contract but then retrieved the document before it could be delivered to RSM. RSM claims that the extension is valid, even though RSM never received it. RSM has asked the tribunal to declare the exploration is still in force and effect.”

I have read Grynberg’s suit. I did not gather from reading it that it has anything to do with an alleged renewed contract that Grynberg admits is hearsay, anyway. The shaky assertion appears to have been created by Earl Huntley and Ausbert d’Auvergne—both campaigners for Kenny Anthony at the time of the 2011 elections. Neither has provided an iota of evidence supportive of their desperate invention. 

Ausbert d’Auvergne, whom King had reluctantly fired from his administration to appease Richard Frederick and others shortly after Sir John’s passing, has acknowledged on record his surprise upon learning his boss had renewed the Grynberg contract. After all, the government had earlier decided to do the precise opposite. In any event, this is what the Jade wrote in a related press bulletin dated 20 April 2012 and released nearly two weeks later. It is calculatedly vague: “The Corporation [RSM] bases its case on two grounds. Firstly, notwithstanding two previous extensions by the former SLP administration to continue exploration, it could not complete its exploration because of the failure to resolve boundary disputes between Saint Lucia and neighboring states. This failure, says the Corporation, constitutes grounds of force majeure. More will be said of this force majeure in due course.”

It is difficult discerning what are the Jade’s personal pronouncements and what she claims are Grynberg’s stated grounds for his suit. Nevertheless: “Secondly, the Corporation claims the former prime minister Stephenson Kingdid sign an extension to the agreement which he subsequently retrieved . . . The second ground is implicitly premised on the fact that the agreement was revived by former prime minister King’s letter, which was recalled but confirmed by Mr. d’Auvergne.”

As if citing Scripture, the Jade adds: “These matters were publicly discussed prior to the 2011 elections.” Surely, it would’ve been more precise to say “these matters” were a major part of the SLP’s election platform! Paradoxically, the Jade goes on to quote Grynberg’s claim that the Stephenson King government had in 2008 taken “the position that the agreement had expired” but it had subsequently been reported that King had “taken steps to put up the agreement area which RSM has the right to explore to competitive bidding. By claiming the agreement has expired and threatening to place exploration rights in the subject area out to competitive bid, Saint Lucia has breached the agreement.”

Nothing implicit about that. Grynberg is clearly citing breach of contract as the basis of his suit; not some transparent allegation by two hardly disinterested parties. In a letter dated 18 February 2000, Grynberg wrote the following to the prime minister Stephenson King: “We regret that your government intends to initiate a competitive bidding and respectfully remind you that under our agreement, Article 26, any dispute shall be resolved amicably; but if it cannot be resolved the dispute shall be submitted for settlement by arbitration to the International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes . . . We intend to rely on this clause of our agreement.”

It remains to be seen if Grynberg actually “posts security for costs in the form of an irrevocable bank guarantee of US$750,000 within thirty days of the tribunal’s decision” and whether the ICSID then accedes to a government of Saint Lucia request “to cancel the
hearing date,” or if the government “chooses to seek remedies other than postponing the hearing if RSM does not comply.” To think that all of the above could have been avoided, and Saint Lucians spared the enormous cost.

If only the prime minister had done what needed to be done in the first place, by which I mean: conducted a due diligence check into Jack Grynberg’s background; taken his own attorney general’s counsel and sought appropriate legal advice; included his Cabinet in his deliberations with the Colorado oilman. Then again so could Rochamel and Frenwell have been easily avoided, not to say Helenair. At the very least we might’ve saved ourselves some $46 million!

The preceding was first published in 2014. It is reproduced as a reminder of how we landed in the Jack Grynberg oil dump.