An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers

@guardian.co.tt

Whol­ly state-owned Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) is sig­nalling ma­jor de­vel­op­ments in Trinidad and To­ba­go’s en­er­gy sec­tor, with chair­man Ger­ald Ramdeen say­ing Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is ex­pect­ed to make sig­nif­i­cant an­nounce­ments with­in days.

Ramdeen said the an­nounce­ments will fol­low two months of work in­volv­ing NGC, the Min­istry of En­er­gy and in­ter­na­tion­al up­stream part­ners, with a fo­cus on bring­ing new in­vest­ment and nat­ur­al gas in­to the down­stream sec­tor. He was speak­ing to re­porters af­ter the Com­mis­sion­er of State Lands for­mal­ly vest­ed NGC with the ti­tle to the lands on which the Beach­field gas pro­cess­ing fa­cil­i­ty in Guayagua­yare stands, dur­ing a cer­e­mo­ny at the Hy­att Re­gency yes­ter­day.

The trans­fer marks a key step in ad­vanc­ing the Man­a­tee gas project and se­cur­ing fu­ture gas sup­ply for the coun­try.

Ramdeen said the Gov­ern­ment is al­so see­ing in­creased in­ter­est from in­ter­na­tion­al com­pa­nies in the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate.

“There is sig­nif­i­cant work that has been done on the Point Lisas Es­tate by the NGC with our in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners, in­clud­ing Nu­trien, in­clud­ing all of the down­stream­ers, in­clud­ing com­pa­nies that have not stepped foot in T&T be­fore, that are now ready, will­ing and able to make in­vest­ments,” he said.

He de­clined to pro­vide de­tails, say­ing the Prime Min­is­ter should make the an­nounce­ments.

Ramdeen al­so point­ed to long-dis­cussed up­stream projects, in­clud­ing Man­a­tee, Lo­ran-Man­a­tee and Drag­on, say­ing the fo­cus is now on turn­ing gas re­sources in­to eco­nom­ic re­turns.

“What you are go­ing to ex­pe­ri­ence, and what the peo­ple of this coun­try and the re­gion are go­ing to ex­pe­ri­ence, is the ac­tu­al mon­eti­sa­tion of mol­e­cules that will bring rev­enue to the peo­ple of this coun­try,” he said.

He crit­i­cised the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion for its gas poli­cies, ar­gu­ing that projects were sanc­tioned with­out suf­fi­cient pro­vi­sion for gas to reach T&T’s down­stream in­dus­tries.

Ramdeen said NGC no longer has a gas mo­nop­oly and must com­pete with up­stream pro­duc­ers, in­clud­ing for gas priced at LNG-linked rates, to sup­ply down­stream users.

He said the com­pa­ny is pur­su­ing a broad­er role across the en­er­gy val­ue chain, in­clud­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties in up­stream pro­duc­tion and down­stream as­sets.

“At­lantic LNG has share­hold­ers. The NGC is one of those share­hold­ers,” he said, adding that dis­cus­sions are tak­ing place around strength­en­ing its po­si­tion in the up­stream and down­stream sec­tors.

On the Brechin Cas­tle so­lar project, from which T&TEC is no longer tak­ing elec­tric­i­ty, Ramdeen said the three share­hold­ers of the re­new­able en­er­gy fa­cil­i­ty—NGC, BP and Shell—now have to find a com­mer­cial so­lu­tion that al­lows the as­set to cre­ate val­ue.