In the last week, T&T’s en­er­gy sec­tor has ex­pe­ri­enced ex­tra­or­di­nary, mo­men­tous de­vel­op­ments, with BP an­nounc­ing an agree­ment to ac­quire Wood­side En­er­gy’s 70 per cent stake in the Ca­lyp­so gas project last Thurs­day, Au­gust 6, which takes the Lon­don-head­quar­tered com­pa­ny’s share­hold­ing in the gas field, which is north east of To­ba­go, to 100 per cent.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar an­nounced on Mon­day, Au­gust 10, that BP had agreed to as­sign a 20 per cent in­ter­est in the Man­akin field, part of the cross-bor­der Cocuina/Man­akin field, to the 100-per cent state-owned Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny.

And the T&T Prime Min­is­ter al­so re­ferred to a pro­pos­al by a com­pa­ny called Curlew Mid­stream to es­tab­lish a fu­el stor­age and bunker­ing ter­mi­nal at Point Lisas. Fu­el stor­age is a core func­tion of 100-per cent state-owned Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny and, in a state­ment is­sued on Feb­ru­ary 2, 2025, the com­pa­ny iden­ti­fied that ex­pand­ing its bunker­ing busi­ness can be­come “a very lu­cra­tive for­eign-ex­change earn­ing busi­ness.” One won­ders, there­fore, if Curlew Mid­stream’s pro­pos­al in­cludes ac­quir­ing all of Paria’s fu­el stor­age and bunker­ing as­sets or even the en­tire com­pa­ny.

The above is great news and in­di­cates an ad­min­is­tra­tion that is work­ing to im­prove the fi­nan­cial well­be­ing of the pop­u­la­tion. But, to me, the most im­me­di­ate­ly con­se­quen­tial dis­clo­sure in the past sev­en days was the rev­e­la­tion by Pin­na­cle Steel and Vana­di­um Cor­po­ra­tion of SOME of its plans for the pro­posed restora­tion of the iron and steel plant at the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate.

That fa­cil­i­ty was com­mis­sioned by the Gov­ern­ment as IS­COTT (Iron and Steel Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go) in 1980 and leased to Lak­sh­mi Mit­tal’s Is­pat Group (which ran the plant as Caribbean Is­pat) in 1989. At the end of the five-year lease, Mit­tal ex­er­cised his op­tion to pur­chase the Point Lisas com­plex out­right from the Gov­ern­ment for US$70 mil­lion, af­ter re­port­ed­ly turn­ing the plant in­to a high­ly prof­itable en­ter­prise with­in his first year of con­trol.

As stat­ed at Mon­day’s un­veil­ing of Ibis Steel Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go, the lo­cal sub­sidiary of Pin­na­cle Steel and Vana­di­um Cor­po­ra­tion, the vi­sion is to make the fa­cil­i­ty not on­ly as good as it once was, but to ex­ceed and to do more than has ever been done at the fa­cil­i­ty.

“Our vi­sion for this fa­cil­i­ty is that it will be one of the most tech­no­log­i­cal­ly ad­vanced, low­est-cost, and en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly steel mills in the world, putting T&T on the map…on the fore­front, the lead­ing edge of steel pro­duc­tion tech­nol­o­gy,” said Ed­win Ben­nett, the CEO of Pin­na­cle Steel and Vana­di­um Cor­po­ra­tion and Ibis Steel Com­pa­ny of T&T.

Mr Ben­nett dis­closed plans for an ini­tial in­vest­ment of US$250 mil­lion with 350 jobs cre­at­ed dur­ing the restart. He said when the com­pa­ny is in pro­duc­tion, 500 full-time jobs are ex­pect­ed and that “af­ter an ex­pan­sion in the fu­ture, an­oth­er US$500 mil­lion and dou­ble the num­ber of jobs, so to 1,000.” Mr Ben­nett al­so said first pro­duc­tion of vana­di­um is planned “by the end of 2027.”

That is the ex­tent of the in­for­ma­tion on the plant fur­nished at the func­tion, which was held a few me­tres from the gates of the steel plant on the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate.

Poor dis­clo­sure

One of the nuggets of in­for­ma­tion that I picked up in the last three days is that TT Iron Steel Com­pa­ny, which was an­nounced as the pur­chas­er of the steel plant in Ju­ly 2024, in a com­pet­i­tive process, “was al­ways owned by Pin­na­cle Steel.” If that is the case, why has that con­nec­tion not been dis­closed?

TT Iron­Steel Com­pa­ny paid the liq­uida­tor US$30 mil­lion for the fa­cil­i­ty. That sum does not in­clude the dock.

I al­so learnt that Pin­na­cle Steel pro­pos­es to im­port iron ore, which will be processed to an in­ter­me­di­ate stage at Point Lisas, in­volv­ing the ex­ten­sive use of wa­ter and elec­tric­i­ty.

Eas­i­ly avail­able re­search in­di­cates that raw wa­ter is used for crush­ing, wet milling, and con­cen­trat­ing vana­di­um-bear­ing ores (like mag­netite). That re­search points to aque­ous so­lu­tions and wa­ter-leach­ing steps be­ing used to dis­solve and sep­a­rate vana­di­um from roast­ed slag or ores. That the process gen­er­ates sig­nif­i­cant vol­umes of waste­water, which re­quire care­ful en­vi­ron­men­tal man­age­ment.

A great deal of elec­tric­i­ty is al­so re­quired to crush and pul­verise the iron ore, for mag­net­ic sep­a­ra­tion, and dur­ing the roast­ing, smelt­ing, and cal­ci­na­tion stages to con­vert con­cen­trates in­to vana­di­um pen­tox­ide or fer­rovana­di­um.

Ques­tions

1) How much wa­ter is used in the pro­cess­ing of iron ore in­to an in­ter­me­di­ate prod­uct (per­haps vana­di­um pen­tox­ide or fer­rovana­di­um)?

2) What spe­cial arrange­ments do the own­ers of the pro­posed steel fa­cil­i­ty have in place for the treat­ment of waste­water and will the arrange­ment with the Amer­i­can own­ers in­clude a cer­tifi­cate of en­vi­ron­men­tal clear­ance (CEC) from T&T's En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty?

3) Will the wa­ter for the pro­duc­tion of vana­di­um come from the dams and reser­voirs that “sup­ply” house­holds through­out the coun­try and if it does, will that mean house­holds hav­ing ac­cess to wa­ter for few­er days than now?

4) Or will the wa­ter come from De­sal­cott, the de­sali­na­tion fa­cil­i­ty lo­cat­ed on the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate?

5) And if the steel com­pa­ny takes wa­ter from De­sal­cott, will it pay the US$1 per cu­bic me­tre it is es­ti­mat­ed that the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) pur­chas­es de­sali­nat­ed wa­ter at?

6) Or will WASA con­tin­ue to pay De­sal­cott about US$1 per cu­bic me­tre for de­sali­nat­ed wa­ter, which the wa­ter com­pa­ny then sup­plies to Ibis Steel at less than US$1 per cu­bic me­tre. That would, in ef­fect, mean that a prof­it-seek­ing com­pa­ny will ben­e­fit from sub­sidised wa­ter from WASA, and there­fore the tax­pay­ers of T&T?

Sim­i­lar ques­tions can, and must, be asked (and an­swered) with re­gard to the sup­ply of elec­tric­i­ty to Ibis Steel.

I want to be very clear that this com­men­ta­tor is very much in favour of the idea of re­vi­tals­ing the Arcelor­Mit­tal fa­cil­i­ty, es­pe­cial­ly if there are fi­nan­cial ben­e­fits for the Trea­sury. What Pin­na­cle Steel and Vana­di­um Cor­po­ra­tion is propos­ing sounds like a great ex­am­ple of for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment, which T&T des­per­ate­ly needs.

But it is a bit sur­pris­ing that much of the ear­ly com­men­tary on the in­vest­ment has fo­cused on the pos­si­bil­i­ty that it will en­hance the flow of for­eign ex­change in­to the coun­try as well as in­crease the em­ploy­ment of skilled labour.

These com­ments are be­ing made in the ab­sence of any clear un­der­stand­ing of what are the fis­cal and oth­er arrange­ments the Gov­ern­ment is ne­go­ti­at­ing, or has ne­go­ti­at­ed, with Pin­na­cle Steel:

More ques­tions

* Will the pro­posed steel fa­cil­i­ty be de­fined as a petro­chem­i­cal com­pa­ny and be sub­ject to stan­dard T&T fis­cal oblig­a­tions, in­clud­ing cor­po­ra­tion tax (statu­to­ri­ly at 35 per cent), busi­ness levy tax­es, the green fund levy, Val­ue Added Tax (VAT) and lo­cal prop­er­ty tax­es?

* Or will Ibis Steel be grant­ed Spe­cial Eco­nom­ic Zone sta­tus and there­fore be en­ti­tled to a re­duced tax rate of 15 per cent with ad­di­tion­al al­lowances, in­clud­ing full prop­er­ty tax ex­emp­tions, stamp du­ty waivers, and ze­ro-rat­ed VAT or cus­toms du­ty ex­emp­tions on ap­proved cap­i­tal goods, equip­ment and raw ma­te­ri­als?

* How can any­one be sure that the vana­di­um in­vest­ment will re­sult in more for­eign ex­change in­to T&T, if few peo­ple know what tax­es the com­pa­ny will pay or whether it will pay tax­es at all?

* Will the for­eign in­vestors agree to the ap­pli­ca­tion of lo­cal con­tent rules that de­fine the em­ploy­ees that can be hired, the con­trac­tors that can be used or where the sup­plies can be pur­chased?

I ex­pect to be ac­cused of ask­ing ques­tions that are pre­ma­ture, but isn’t the first re­veal of a com­pa­ny in T&T the time and place for such ques­tions to be asked and an­swered?

About Ibis Steel

The Ibis Steel Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go was in­cor­po­rat­ed on March 10, 2026. It ex­pects to have be­tween two and sev­en di­rec­tors and in­tends to em­ploy 50 peo­ple, ac­cord­ing to its T&T Com­pa­nies Reg­istry fil­ing.

The first share­hold­er of the com­pa­ny is Av­er­nus Cap­i­tal LLC, of 251 Lit­tle Falls Dri­ve, Wilm­ing­ton, Delaware. The amount of the stat­ed cap­i­tal of Av­er­nus Cap­i­tal is list­ed as $1.0 and the com­pa­ny has one share in is­sue as at yes­ter­day morn­ing.

Av­er­nus Cap­i­tal has three ben­e­fi­cial own­ers:

* Ed­win Web­ster Ben­nett, an Amer­i­can with a New York ad­dress, whose oc­cu­pa­tion is giv­en as chief fi­nan­cial of­fi­cer. He is the own­er of 33.33 per cent of Av­er­nus Cap­i­tal;

* Daniel Fredrick Dut­ton, a Cana­di­an with a Carig­nan, Que­bec ad­dress, whose oc­cu­pa­tion is giv­en as met­al­lur­gist. He owns 33.33 per cent of Av­er­nus Cap­i­tal; and

* David Alan Cald­well, an Amer­i­can with an Ash­land, Ore­gon ad­dress, whose oc­cu­pa­tion is giv­en as ge­ol­o­gist. He al­so owns 33.33 per cent of Av­er­nus Cap­i­tal.

The di­rec­tors of Ibis Steel, at in­cor­po­ra­tion, were Ed­win Ben­nett and Shali­ni Rose Camp­bell, an at­tor­ney at law. Mr Cald­well was added as a di­rec­tor of Ibis Steel on Ju­ly 9. The sec­re­tary of the com­pa­ny is Den­tons De­lany, which is de­scribed as a Pan-Caribbean law firm op­er­at­ing as the Caribbean arm of Den­tons, the world’s largest glob­al law firm.