Ross Sheil, Staff Reporter

Behind the current Nigerian crude oil deal for Jamaica is Carl Masters, the president and chief Executive officer of Goodworks International (GWI), the Atlanta-based company that in May, threatened to sue Opposition Leader Bruce Golding after his conflict of interest allegation against former Prime Minister P. J. Patterson.

Mr. Golding had said that it was wrong for Mr. Patterson to have accepted his post of senior adviser with GWI since it had a relationship with Mirant during its bid to acquire the Jamaica Public Service Company (JPS) in 2001 when Patterson was Prime Minister.

In 2000, while an oil agent for the Chevron oil company, Mr. Masters offered his services to the Petroleum Corporation of Jamaica (PCJ) to revive the deal between the state-owned PCJ and its Nigerian equivalent, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC). This came seven years after the Nigerian government, for political reasons, cancelled the agreement with Jamaica and other, countries who had similar deals.

Mr. Masters was successful, with crude oil cargo uplifts recommen-cing in October 1 of that year and he continues to serve as the oil liaison agent for PCJ, responsible for annually renegotiating the 'evergreen' deal between PCJ and NNPC. The relationship with both him and Trafigura continues to be satisfactory, said Dr. Raymond Wright, former PCJ Group managing director.

Since the renewal of the contract, Trafigura has traded 34,354,660 barrels of the Nigerian crude on the international market, generating US$2,443,381 in profit for Jamaica.

"Goodworks has very good connections in Nigeria as they indeed have in the whole of Africa," said Dr. Wright in explain-ing Goodworks' success in revitalising the deal. Goodworks, which has two offices in Nigeria, and Mr. Master's former employers, Chevron, are involved in a joint venture with NNPC Chevron Nigeria Limited.

Dr. Wright said that Goodworks had no prior relationship with Trafigura Beheer and was unknown to them until PCJ hired the Dutch oil company to trade the Nigerian crude on the interna-tional market.

Currently, Trafigura trades the crude oil on the international market for which they pay PCJ US$0.12 per barrel.

Mr. Masters was unavailable for comment as his office said he was travelling in Africa.