Energy Minister to compensate quarry operator

A QUARRY operator who had been pre-approved for a mining licence for a lucrative operation in Matura in 2015 will be awarded compensation from the Energy and Energy Industries Ministry after the minister chose to rescind the pre-approval.

Justice Mira Dean-Armorer said Brendon West, principal of West and Associates, was entitled to judgment. She also ordered the minister to take all steps necessary to grant Brendon West, principal of West and Associates, a mining licence “in the national interest” for five years for a 40-acre parcel of state land at Melajo Block E in Matura.

West was represented by attorneys Kelvin Ramkissoon and Leon Kalicharan. Attorneys Karen Boodan and Michelle Benjamin represented the minister.

West filed judicial review proceedings challenging the minister's decision to rescind his pre-approval.

He asked the court to declare the minister’s decision to rescind the grant illegal, irrational, improper and of no effect. He also asked the court to quash the minister’s decision and order him to reconsider his March 20, 2014, application for the licence.

Although West received most of the declarations he asked for, he did not for breach of legitimate expectation.

On June 18, 2015, West was told he was pre-approved but on January 9, 2018, the ministry told him of the decision to rescind approval. West, according to the judgment, found out the Cabinet’s decision was made on November 9, 2017, after he made a freedom of information request.

He said he had expended millions to prepare for operations for when he gotthe quarry licence, including buying two new excavators valued at $6 million; water pumps at $.6 million; a generator at $175,000; establishing a processing plant at $2.5 million; and buying additional property at $1 million.

He also hired a firm of geoscientists to do geological surveys and got the necessary documentation and licences such as Town and Country approval, certificate of environmental clearance, payment of outstanding royalties for another parcel of state land, survey plans and a water abstraction licence.

In her decision, Dean-Armorer said the ministry failed to prove West had a 90-day deadline to produce certain documents after pre-approval, either through documentary evidence or by calling West for cross-examination.

She said the evidence suggested West and Associates phad diligently satisfied the conditions and months had passed without comment from anyone. She said West even pleaded with the minister, by letter dated May 5, 2017, but “silence followed in the ensuing months.” He was eventually told of the decision to rescind the pre-approval. The judge also pointed out that in the interim a third party had applied for lands close by and had received its licence on April 10, 2017.

“The unevenness of the hand of the defendant exacerbated the irrationality. It failed to add up that the 90-day deadline could be lifted for one entity and not another.

“This, in my view, served to intensify the defiance of logic and more particularly of accepted moral standards.

"Accordingly, it was my view and I held that the decision, as communicated in the letter of the January 9, 2018 was flawed on the ground of irrationality,” she held.