Con­trac­tor Su­per In­dus­tri­al Ser­vices (SIS) has been grant­ed per­mis­sion to pur­sue a fi­nal ap­peal be­fore the Ju­di­cial Com­mit­tee of the Privy Coun­cil over a long-run­ning dis­pute with the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) in­volv­ing the con­tro­ver­sial Beetham Wa­ter Treat­ment Plant.

On Wednes­day, Ap­pel­late Court judges Gillian Lucky, Maria Wil­son and Ricky Rahim grant­ed SIS and its sub­sidiary Rain For­est Re­sorts Ltd leave to take the mat­ter to the UK-based court, chal­leng­ing suc­ces­sive rul­ings by the lo­cal courts in favour of NGC.

NGC ini­ti­at­ed le­gal ac­tion in De­cem­ber 2015 af­ter com­menc­ing ar­bi­tra­tion pro­ceed­ings against the com­pa­nies over the still-in­com­plete project. The treat­ment plant was orig­i­nal­ly es­ti­mat­ed to cost US$162,055,318.77, but NGC is now seek­ing to re­cov­er just over $400 mil­lion it says was ad­vanced to SIS be­fore the con­tract was ter­mi­nat­ed in 2016.