Apart from the im­pact of the cap­ture of Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nicholas Maduro by US forces on T&T’s fu­ture nat­ur­al gas sup­plies on Jan­u­ary 3, the biggest and most con­se­quen­tial busi­ness news sto­ry for the first six weeks of 2026 has been the de­ci­sion by the state-owned Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go (NGC) to in­crease the price of nat­ur­al gas to its light in­dus­tri­al and com­mer­cial cus­tomers (LICs) and Trinidad Ce­ment Ltd (TCL.

On De­cem­ber 24, 2025 (Christ­mas Eve), NGC com­mu­ni­cat­ed to the LICs and TCL that it was in­creas­ing the price of nat­ur­al gas to them by 77 per cent, that the pro­posed price of gas for 2026 was non-ne­go­tiable, and that if com­pa­nies did not agree to the terms and con­di­tions of its sup­ply of gas, it would be al­lo­cat­ed to an­oth­er com­pa­ny.

In re­sponse to a let­ter from T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Dale Par­son, call­ing for a less oner­ous nat­ur­al gas price in­crease, NGC chair­man Ger­ald Ramdeen wrote:

“You should be aware that over the past ten years, your mem­bers ben­e­fit­ted from a high­ly sub­sidised cost of gas, be­low NGC’s ac­qui­si­tion costs. That is not a pol­i­cy that the present Board of NGC can con­tin­ue. The ev­i­dence does not sug­gest that this sub­sidy was passed on to the cus­tomers of your mem­bers. One can con­clude that it was re­flect­ed en­tire­ly in their prof­it lines.”

Is the price of nat­ur­al gas sold to the LICs high­ly sub­sidised?

As a re­sult of the im­por­tance of the LIC sec­tor to T&T, the in­tent of the NGC was al­ways to en­sure that the price of nat­ur­al gas al­lowed them to re­main com­pet­i­tive, for­eign-ex­change earn­ers who paid tax­es to the Gov­ern­ment and em­ployed thou­sands of T&T na­tion­als. It has al­ways been the in­tent of the NGC, as well, that it would not in­cur a loss on the sale of nat­ur­al gas to the LICs.

Go­ing back more than 30 years, NGC achieved its dual goals—com­pet­i­tive­ly priced nat­ur­al gas to the LICs and that the price was above the com­pa­ny’s cost of ac­qui­si­tion and its op­er­a­tional costs—by ne­go­ti­at­ing low-priced tranch­es of gas from the up­stream com­pa­nies, such as bpTT and Shell, that was sold to the Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC), Trinidad Ce­ment Ltd (TCL) and the LICs.

That means the LICs pre-2026 gas-pric­ing arrange­ment—which was US$3 per mm­scf, plus a 4 per cent an­nu­al es­ca­la­tor—was ne­go­ti­at­ed at a lev­el that en­sured the LICs re­mained com­pet­i­tive and that NGC made a small prof­it on the sale of the gas to TCL and the LICs (T&TEC is a dif­fer­ent mat­ter).

Based on NGC util­is­ing the up­stream tranch­es of gas—which were all fixed and low priced—for T&TEC, TCL and the LICs, the state-owned nat­ur­al gas mer­chant was NOT sell­ing sub­sidised gas to the LICs.

What NGC has not told the pub­lic is that there are, at least, two nat­ur­al gas prices:

* One that is fixed at a low price, as a re­sult of ne­go­ti­at­ed arrange­ments with up­stream com­pa­nies, that is sold to T&TEC, TCL and the LICs;

* The oth­er is sold to petro­chem­i­cal com­pa­nies op­er­at­ing in T&T, that is part­ly linked to the price that those com­pa­nies sell their am­mo­nia, methanol and oth­er prod­ucts for on the world mar­ket. The per-unit cost of the gas sold by NGC to petro­chem­i­cal com­pa­nies was gen­er­al­ly much high­er than the price sold to the LICs.

There­fore, if the NGC chair­man bases his ar­gu­ment on the AV­ER­AGE of the price of gas sold to both the petro­chem­i­cal com­pa­nies and to the group of T&TEC, TCL and the LICs, then the over­all cost of gas is go­ing to be high­er than the US$3 per unit price it was up to the end of De­cem­ber 2025. In­clud­ing the price sold to petro­chem­i­cal com­pa­nies skews the av­er­age.

In oth­er words, if the av­er­age price of gas sold to the petro­chem­i­cal com­pa­nies was US$5 per unit and the av­er­age price sold to T&TEC, TCL and the LICs was US$3 per unit, then the over­all av­er­age of NGC’s gas sales to both groups would be US$4.

But, on the face of it, that ar­gu­ment is bo­gus be­cause:

* T&TEC, TCL and the LICs are get­ting a spe­cial tranche of gas that is fixed and low-priced, while the price the petro­chem­i­cal com­pa­nies pay for gas is part­ly linked to the price at which they sell their com­modi­ties;

* The av­er­age amount of gas used in the pro­duc­tion of am­mo­nia, am­mo­nia de­riv­a­tives and methanol for the first eight months of 2025 was 926 mm­scf/d, ac­cord­ing to the Con­sol­i­dat­ed Month­ly Bul­letin, for the pe­ri­od Jan­u­ary to Au­gust 2025, pub­lished by the Min­istry of En­er­gy.

On the oth­er hand, the av­er­age amount of gas used by the LICs for the first eight months of 2025 was 9 mm­scf/d and TCL used 12 mm­scf/d.

At­tempt­ing to get an av­er­age cost of ac­qui­si­tion by com­par­ing the vol­ume of gas sold to TCL and the LIC (less than 1 per cent of to­tal gas used) with gas sold to petro­chem­i­cal com­pa­nies, (37 per cent of the to­tal gas used in T&T), is clear­ly a mis­take and a mis­use of sta­tis­tics.

It is clear that Mr Ramdeen in­clud­ed gas sold to petro­chem­i­cal com­pa­nies to ar­rive at an av­er­age ac­qui­si­tion cost for the LICs, but is that the whole truth?

Un­prece­dent­ed break with past prac­tices

We now know the method NGC chose to im­pose its 77 per cent in­crease in the price of nat­ur­al gas to the LICs and TCL. That rep­re­sent­ed “a sharp and un­prece­dent­ed break” from the way the mo­nop­oly gas sup­pli­er con­duct­ed its re­la­tion­ships with its LIC cus­tomers, ac­cord­ing to a let­ter writ­ten by Group CEO of ANSA McAL, An­tho­ny Sab­ga III.

In that quite ex­tra­or­di­nary let­ter to the act­ing pres­i­dent of NGC Ed­mund Sub­ryan, dat­ed Feb­ru­ary 5, Mr Sab­ga wrote, “From at least 2012 through to the 2019–2025 gas sales con­tracts, re­newals were con­duct­ed through sus­tained good faith ne­go­ti­a­tions dur­ing which gas sup­ply con­tin­ued un­in­ter­rupt­ed.

“Where new agree­ments were con­clud­ed af­ter ex­piry of pri­or con­tracts, the agreed terms re­lat­ed back to the in­ter­ven­ing sup­ply pe­ri­od, pre­serv­ing op­er­a­tional con­ti­nu­ity while ne­go­ti­a­tions pro­ceed­ed.”

The ex­am­ple of NGC main­tain­ing con­tract prices even when sup­ply con­tracts had ex­pired came in 2017, when NGC sig­nalled to its LICs that the price of nat­ur­al gas to them was ex­pect­ed to in­crease be­cause its ac­qui­si­tion cost would be in­creas­ing in two years. That was be­cause of the high­er gas prices in the sup­ply con­tracts with the up­stream pro­duc­ers, such as bpTT and EOG and oth­ers. Both the bpTT and EOG gas sales con­tracts were signed in 2017.

In a mas­ter­ful piece in the last Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian in which he out­lined some of the his­to­ry of NGC’s re­cent nat­ur­al gas prices, en­er­gy econ­o­mist Gre­go­ry McGuire demon­strat­ed con­clu­sive­ly that NGC, be­fore its cur­rent lead­er­ship, was will­ing to en­gage with the LICs with com­mon sense and flex­i­bil­i­ty.

Mr McGuire out­lined that in 2005, NGC agreed to a con­di­tion­al US$0.20/mmb­tu re­duc­tion in the price of nat­ur­al gas to the LICs, while main­tain­ing the 4 per cent es­ca­la­tor in recog­ni­tion of “the role played by the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor in terms of em­ploy­ment cre­ation and forex earn­ings” as well as “to en­sure that the LIC price re­mained in close par­i­ty with the ac­qui­si­tion cost over time.”

He al­so wrote that in 2012, when the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship led by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar was in pow­er, the NGC gift­ed its LIC cus­tomers a five-year price freeze, in a fur­ther ef­fort to sup­port the de­vel­op­ment of the sec­tor. That re­mained in place un­til 2017, when the es­ca­la­tor was again ap­plied to the price.

“Giv­en the im­pact of COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, in 2020 NGC again agreed to a price freeze which re­mained in place un­til 2022,” ac­cord­ing to Mr McGuire, who worked at NGC for 24 years.

As out­lined by Mr Sab­ga, NGC main­tained the 2017 gas price and the con­tract­ed gas sup­ply arrange­ments to the LICs un­til 2019. In that 2017 to 2019 pe­ri­od, NGC was un­der the stew­ard­ship of chair­man Ger­ry Brooks and the late Mark Lo­quan ORTT, who served as the com­pa­ny’s pres­i­dent. Those are two T&T pa­tri­ots who un­der­stood the im­por­tance of ne­go­ti­at­ing in good faith and main­tain­ing good re­la­tion­ships with the strate­gi­cal­ly im­por­tant LIC sec­tor.

Can the same be said of the cur­rent lead­ers at NGC?