The government may be praising their new deal with Oban  Energies but the official opposition is calling that deal over zealous.

In an interview with The Journal yesterday Chairman of the Progressive Liberal Party Senator  Fred Mitchell said the government obviously didn’t do their due diligence with this deal.

The  Journal understands that the former PLP government also had a deal with Oban,  but it only went up to the point of a letter of conditional approval as they would not agree to sign a heads of agreement until certain conditions were meet.

Those conditions they are not sure are met now even several years later.

“The point we made to the Prime Minister and his cabinet is,  having regard to the conditions that we imposed and their inability to meet those conditions, is the government now satisfied that those conditions have been met before proceeding as they have with the  Heads of the Agreement?

“We know what the answer to both questions are.  First, we know that the financing is not in place, because the man said that he needed this approval to go and get funding. And certaintly, we know that the environmental impact assessment has not been done because they promised to have it in 45 days. Under the PLP,  they would have not meet the conditions for the  Heads of Agreement,” Mitchell said.

Added to the concerns over funding the project, as well as having the environmental impact assessment  done, another cause for alarm is the fact that the non executive chairman of the billion dollar project Peter Kreiger was accused of violating the Federal  Securities laws  in the U.S  in 2005.

Senator Mitchell said that fact is a big one.

He said he could only presume that  the government’s argument is probably that because the matter was settled in 2007,  then that counts as due process; an excuse he says he can’t fathom, considering the nature of the project.

“I can’t see how with a project of this nature, where you have, as it appears, a man with a pattern of fraud from time to time, how can he pass due diligence in those circumstances. I have no idea and this is one of the issues we have raised  as well,” Mitchell said.

The  Oban Energies  project which promises 600 permanent  jobs for the stifled Grand Bahamian economy is one that Mr. Mitchell said could have only been out of desperation.

” Our suspicion is that this thing was invented out of desperation,  because they have nothing else to show for the time that they have been in office. And in the middle of this fight over the position of the  Speaker of the House,  they had to come up with something to distract the country from that and so they came up with this deal. That is our suspicion and until proven differently,  that is the conclusion that ourselves and the country will draw,” Senator  Mitchell said.

In another 45 days, the Environmental   Impact Assessment for the project will take place,  but ahead of that the government has promised to table the entire heads of agreement in the House of Assembly.