LUSHANN'S SOLICITORS REACT

Solicitors for Lushann International Energy Inc. have stated that there is no court order barring the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the company, Mr Quincy Sintim Aboagye, and his counsel from travelling outside the United States of America (USA).
According to them, there was no case between Lushann International and G.E. Rentals Inc. in the USA, given the fact that Lushann’s action against G.E. Rentals was discontinued and the counterclaim by G.E. Rentals could not be activated in law because it did not pay the requisite filing fees.
A rejoinder signed by Mr Etwie Atta Akyea and issued by Zoe, Akyea & Co., legal practitioners in reaction to a story carried in the May 27, 2007 issue of the Daily Graphic said G.E. Rentals had rather filed a contempt application in the Texan court with the aim of attaching Mr Sintim Aboagye for contempt of court to prevent him from testifying in the Ghanaian court.
However, they said there was a void order from the Texan court restraining Lushann’s CEO from going ahead with the case in Ghana.
In a background to the matter, the lawyers said Lushann, which was currently in a joint venture with the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC), was the first and only all African-owned and operated offshore oil production company in the world and signed a power purchase agreement (PPA) with the Volta River Authority (VRA) in January 2002.
That, they said, was to forestall the power crisis in Ghana and Mr Sintim Aboagye, a Ghanaian engineer with nearly 30 years’ experience in the oil, gas and power generation industry, was to bring to bear one or more of his patents on the agreement to ensure the supply of electricity to Ghana.
“In order to speedily, efficiently and economically bring this to fruition, Mr Sintim Aboagye sought the co-operation of the world’s largest turbine manufacturer, G.E. Rentals, and signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with it in February 2002,” they said.
According to them, while negotiations and frantic preparations were going on to generate power for Ghana by June 2002, “G.E. Rentals elbowed Lushann out of the deal and brought turbines which Lushann and G.E. Rentals had previously inspected into the country to start the work of power generation”.
G.E. Rentals, they claimed, did not include Mr Sintim Aboagye’s fuel treatment procedures and so the VRA could not supply the correct fuel needed by the equipment, while power generation by G.E. Rentals was going to cost three times as much on the Lushann proposal using the same turbines.
They claimed that by the nature of the agreement signed between the VRA and G.E. Rentals, the VRA had to pay G.E. Rentals, whether power was generated or not, at three times the price, while the contract between Lushann and the VRA would have allowed the VRA to pay for only power produced.
They further claimed that since the original PPA had a face value of $36 million, as soon as G.E. Rentals had billed for and collected the money from the VRA, it took off with the equipment and “not one watt of electricity was produced”.
“G.E. Rentals collected approximately $35 million from Ghana without selling any power to Ghana 18 months down the line,” they claimed.
They said had Lushann executed the first PPA, it would be generating more than 300 megawatts of power, enough to cater for at least a fifth of Ghana’s total power requirement.
“But for this corporate theft, Ghana would not be in darkness at this time, 50 years after independence,” they stated, and added that G.E. Rentals was directly and indirectly responsible for the darkness in Ghana currently.