An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

Whol­ly state-owned Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go (NGC) has re­ject­ed claims that its sub­sidiary, NGC Green Com­pa­ny, owes each com­pressed nat­ur­al gas (CNG) op­er­a­tors or deal­ers more than $450,000 in out­stand­ing elec­tric­i­ty re­im­burse­ments, de­scrib­ing a no­tice post­ed at a San Fer­nan­do ser­vice sta­tion as false and mis­lead­ing.

In a re­lease sent to Guardian Me­dia fol­low­ing a re­quest for com­ment, NGC Green de­nied the al­le­ga­tions con­tained in the no­tice post­ed on the CNG dis­penser at the Car­rousel Ser­vice Sta­tion on Na­pari­ma Ma­yaro Road.

The no­tice claims that NGC Green owes each CNG op­er­a­tor or deal­er more than $450,000 in re­im­burse­ments for in­dus­tri­al elec­tric­i­ty rates cov­er­ing March 2025 to the end of Oc­to­ber 2026.

“NGC Green does not cur­rent­ly owe any CNG op­er­a­tor/deal­er over $450,000.00,” the com­pa­ny de­clared.

NGC Green de­scribed the no­tice as false, li­bel­lous, in­ac­cu­rate, un­truth­ful and mis­lead­ing, adding that it had sought le­gal ad­vice to pro­tect the com­pa­ny’s rep­u­ta­tion and that of em­ploy­ees iden­ti­fied in the no­tice.

The com­pa­ny al­so ac­cused those re­spon­si­ble for post­ing it of seek­ing to dam­age its rep­u­ta­tion, caus­ing hard­ship to cus­tomers and ad­vance their own com­mer­cial in­ter­ests.

NGC Green main­tained that it re­mained com­mit­ted to pro­vid­ing a re­li­able sup­ply of CNG to ser­vice sta­tions un­der ex­ist­ing con­trac­tu­al terms.

For­mer min­is­ter of tourism Ran­dall Mitchell put up the no­tice on his so­cial me­dia page, draw­ing at­ten­tion to the al­le­ga­tions of un­paid re­im­burse­ments as he ques­tioned how NGC could re­port record prof­its while con­cerns were be­ing raised about its fi­nan­cial oblig­a­tions.

The no­tice warns mo­torists of im­me­di­ate changes to the sta­tion’s op­er­a­tions, cit­ing “un­sus­tain­able fi­nan­cial con­straints”. The op­er­a­tor in­di­cat­ed that it could no longer main­tain nor­mal staffing lev­els, reg­u­lar CNG shift al­lo­ca­tions and 24-hour ser­vice.

It al­so claimed that re­peat­ed at­tempts to re­solve the re­im­burse­ment is­sue had been un­suc­cess­ful and that the busi­ness could no longer ab­sorb the fi­nan­cial bur­den.

“No in­de­pen­dent CNG busi­ness can sus­tain this se­vere lev­el of debt,” the no­tice de­clared.

The op­er­a­tor apol­o­gised to mo­torists for the an­tic­i­pat­ed dis­rup­tion, claim­ing it had ex­haust­ed its re­sources try­ing to shield cus­tomers from the dis­pute.

Mitchell’s post comes af­ter NGC an­nounced on Sun­day that the group record­ed prof­it af­ter tax of $2.258 bil­lion for the six months end­ed June 30, 2026, an in­crease of $1.152 bil­lion, or 104 per cent, over the $1.106 bil­lion record­ed for the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od in 2025.

The group al­so re­port­ed an ad­just­ed earn­ings be­fore in­ter­est, tax­es, de­pre­ci­a­tion and amor­ti­sa­tion mar­gin of 31 per cent, a lev­el of prof­itabil­i­ty it in­di­cat­ed had been achieved on­ly twice in its 50-year his­to­ry.

NGC at­trib­uted the im­proved per­for­mance to stronger com­mer­cial mar­gins from its nat­ur­al gas busi­ness, man­age­ment of its liq­ue­fied nat­ur­al gas and nat­ur­al gas liq­uids op­er­a­tions, and cost op­ti­mi­sa­tion and con­tain­ment ini­tia­tives.

To­tal as­sets in­creased to $44.566 bil­lion at June 30, while share­hold­ers’ eq­ui­ty rose to $27.834 bil­lion.

In a so­cial me­dia post, Mitchell ques­tioned whether the re­port­ed earn­ings rep­re­sent­ed cash avail­able to meet the com­pa­ny’s oblig­a­tions, ar­gu­ing that the au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments were need­ed to es­tab­lish the na­ture of the prof­it.

“Mind you, we can­not see the au­dit­ed fi­nan­cials yet to see where the prof­it is and whether it’s just pa­per/ac­count­ing prof­it or whether it’s a re­al cash prof­it,” Mitchell wrote.

“The biggest prof­it ever, but NGC can­not pay its bills.”

NGC chair­man Ger­ald Ramdeen, com­ment­ing on the re­sults, point­ed to the group’s fo­cus on sup­ply re­li­a­bil­i­ty, na­tion­al en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty and ef­fi­cien­cy across the nat­ur­al gas val­ue chain.

He al­so re­ferred to ef­forts to in­crease rev­enue, se­cure ad­di­tion­al gas sup­plies, en­gage new part­ners and as­sess in­vest­ments in­tend­ed to strength­en the group’s com­pet­i­tive­ness and long-term sus­tain­abil­i­ty.