( L - R ) Christie, Potopsingh

CONTRACTOR GENERAL Greg Christie has rejected claims by a senior executive at the Petroleum Corporation of Jamaica (PCJ) that his office granted permission for the Ministry of Mining and Energy to use sole sourcing to procure a shipment of ethanol for the E-10 project in Jamaica.

This is in direct contrast to a statement made last week by group managing director at the PCJ, Dr Ruth Potopsingh, during a meeting of the Public Administration and Appropriations Committee of Parliament in Gordon House.

Pressed by committee members about the procurement process to acquire the shipment of ethanol, Potopsingh reported that the PCJ had applied for a sole source - not requiring it to be put to tender - through the Office of the Contractor General (OCG) and this had been approved.

False assertion

"Please be advised that any such assertion or inference is entirely false and unfounded. Neither I nor my office is empowered by law to grant such approvals, nor does the OCG grant or has ever granted any such approvals," Christie declared Monday in a statement.

Meanwhile, the OCG has written to Dr Wykeham McNeill, chairman of the Public Administration and Appropriations Committee, in-forming him that he had commenced a special investigation into the procurement of ethanol "for and on behalf of the Government of Jamaica and, in particular, the awarding of certain government contracts to Infinity Bio-Energy and JB Ethanol".

Potopsingh had disclosed that the ethanol had been procured without a signed contract.

In his letter to McNeill, the contractor general said his decision to conduct a special investigation into the matter resulted from disclosures which were alleged to have been made during the sitting of a parliamentary committee last Wednesday.

Christie indicated that the information available to him at this point "has disclosed what appears to be very serious issues and questions of national import, which ... must be brought into the public view and ... warrant a full-fledged investigation".

The OCG's chief investigator, Maurice Barrett, will head the team of investigators probing the ethanol deal.

Potopsingh had revealed that the shipment of ethanol purchased from Infinity Bio-Energy was priced at US$2.31 per gallon, 14 cents more than the US$2.17 per gallon on the world market at that time.

The shipment contained 5,200 cubic metres (1,385,224 million gallons) of dehydrated ethanol.

This means the PCJ allegedly spent some $17 million more for the product than the world market price.

edmond.campbell@gleanerjm.com