Ky­ron Reg­is

ky­ron.reg­is@guardian.co.tt

For the first quar­ter of 2020 Trinidad and To­ba­go NGL Lim­it­ed (TTNGL) record­ed an af­ter tax prof­it of $6.9 mil­lion. This rep­re­sents an 85 per cent slide from the com­par­a­tive pe­ri­od in 2019 of $45.8 mil­lion.

In the re­port of the com­pa­ny’s fi­nan­cials, Chair­man Con­rad Enill said: “These re­sults were dri­ven by a sharp de­cline in per­for­mance at PPG­PL with the recog­ni­tion of a low­er share of prof­it from the Com­pa­ny’s in­vest­ment in the joint ven­ture.”

Enill ex­pressed that COVID-19 has cre­at­ed a tem­po­rary de­mand col­lapse in en­er­gy prices across all mar­kets, where the de­cline is cou­pled with the af­ter­math of a price war that has brought a mas­sive crude oil sup­ply in­ven­to­ry glut as pro­duc­ers strug­gle to find mar­kets for their prod­ucts and has sent some prices to un­prece­dent­ed lows.

He said that Nat­ur­al Gas Liq­uid (NGL) prices which cor­re­late strong­ly with crude oil and re­fined prod­uct prices, pre­dictably, were neg­a­tive­ly im­pact­ed dur­ing the quar­ter.

For the three months to 31 March 2020, Enill said, “the tur­bu­lence in the en­er­gy com­mod­i­ty mar­kets that closed off 2019 con­tin­ued in­to 2020 and was ex­ac­er­bat­ed by the im­pact of the Coro­n­avirus (COVID-19) pan­dem­ic.”

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, Enill not­ed that the sharp de­cline in Mont Belvieu prod­uct prices sig­nif­i­cant­ly im­pact­ed the per­for­mance of the com­pa­ny’s un­der­ly­ing as­set Phoenix Park Gas Proces­sors Lim­it­ed (PPG­PL).

Ac­cord­ing to the Chair­man record­ed prices were 32 per cent low­er than the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od in 2019.

He said that the ef­fects of the pan­dem­ic has al­so dis­rupt­ed the planned per­for­mance and mar­kets of the petro­chem­i­cal pro­duc­ers at Point Lisas and the dis­rup­tion has trans­lat­ed in­to low­er nat­ur­al gas de­mand and low­er gas vol­umes through the PPG­PL fa­cil­i­ty for pro­cess­ing.

Enill said that PPG­PL con­tin­ued to be im­pact­ed by low­er NGL con­tent in the gas stream and NGL pro­duc­tion for the quar­ter was 10 per cent low­er than in 2019.

How­ev­er, on a pos­i­tive note he said PPG­PL con­tin­ued to main­tain high op­er­at­ing avail­abil­i­ty and has sus­tained its fo­cus on pru­dent cost and cash man­age­ment.

In or­der to ag­gres­sive­ly grow its busi­ness both lo­cal­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, in Feb­ru­ary 2020, PPG­PL through its whol­ly owned US sub­sidiary, Phoenix Park En­er­gy Mar­ket­ing LLC, ac­quired the NGL liq­uids mar­ket­ing as­sets of Twin Ea­gle Liq­uids Mar­ket­ing LLC.

Twin Ea­gles Mar­ket­ing LLC is a Com­pa­ny based in Hous­ton Texas, USA which is en­gaged in the busi­ness of mar­ket­ing, trad­ing and trans­porta­tion of nat­ur­al gas liq­uids.

Enill said that earn­ings from this ac­qui­si­tion is ex­pect­ed to pos­i­tive­ly im­pact Com­pa­ny re­sults in the fu­ture.