Op­po­si­tion MP and for­mer min­is­ter of en­er­gy, Stu­art Young, has hit back at claims made by Min­is­ter of En­er­gy, Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, that the cur­rent im­passe be­tween the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) and Cana­di­an com­pa­ny, Nu­trien, was re­lat­ed to de­ci­sions made by the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion.

In a post to so­cial me­dia, Young said it was “a se­ri­ous mat­ter of na­tion­al con­cern how com­plete­ly out of his depth Mr Mooni­lal is in the role of Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries,” adding that com­ments at a news con­fer­ence on Thurs­day ex­posed Mooni­lal.

In coun­ter­ing Mooni­lal’s claim that poli­cies be­tween Sep­tem­ber 2015 and April 2025 led to the con­trolled shut­down of the five Nu­trien plants on the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate, Young again stat­ed the Gov­ern­ment has made lit­tle head­way with re­gard to new nat­ur­al gas sup­ply arrange­ments.

“The claim by Mooni­lal that the NGC-Nu­trien break­down in re­la­tion­ship which has led to an un­prece­dent­ed shut­down of state-of-the-art plants (not old out­dat­ed and in­ef­fi­cient plants) is as a re­sult of the pre­vi­ous PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion fail­ing to ne­go­ti­ate gas sales con­tracts is COM­PLETE­LY un­true,” said Young, the MP for Port of Spain North/St. Ann’s.

He con­tin­ued, “As at April 28, 2025 there were NO ex­pired NGC nat­ur­al gas sales con­tracts. All of NGC’s gas sales con­tracts to down­stream petro­chem­i­cal com­pa­nies ex­pired as at De­cem­ber 31, 2025, save for two, one which ex­pires in 2026, and an­oth­er that ex­pires in 2027. So what Mooni­lal has con­firmed is that he, and the UNC gov­ern­ment, did noth­ing for eight months in 2025 to ne­go­ti­ate new gas sales con­tracts be­fore they ex­pired on De­cem­ber 31, 2025.”

Nu­trien shut down its am­mo­nia and urea op­er­a­tions in Point Lisas in Oc­to­ber amid a dis­pute with the NGC con­cern­ing gas sup­ply as well as port-user fees. Last week, NGC con­firmed all gas me­ter runs to Nu­trien’s Point Lisas fa­cil­i­ty would have been iso­lat­ed, cut­ting off sup­ply and ac­cess to port op­er­a­tions.

Young said that much of pos­i­tive news com­ing out of the en­er­gy sec­tor can be traced back to the last ad­min­is­tra­tion, not­ing that to date the Prime Min­is­ter had not re­spond­ed to his ques­tions about new gas con­tracts, sug­gest­ing that no new con­tracts had been con­firmed by the new Gov­ern­ment.

“The work that we did to se­cure Man­a­tee, Cypre, Men­to, Gin­ger, Co­conut, the ac­qui­si­tion of the aged as­sets of bpTT and Wood­side by Peren­co and even the ac­qui­si­tion of Cen­tral Block by Touch­stone from Shell is what is keep­ing the gas flow­ing and the in­dus­try alive. Even NGC’s an­nounce­ment of its ac­qui­si­tion of TROC was the work and pol­i­cy of the PNM,” said Young.

“That is why they had a re­cent press con­fer­ence which was noth­ing but a lame PR (pub­lic re­la­tions) stunt to show the grant­i­ng of a CEC from the EMA to Exxon. This was an­oth­er tell tale sign of noth­ing sub­stan­tial to show.”

In De­cem­ber, when asked by Young in Par­lia­ment whether any new nat­ur­al gas con­tracts had been ne­go­ti­at­ed, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she could di­vulge de­tails con­cern­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions for nat­ur­al gas sup­ply in­volv­ing the gov­ern­ment due to con­fi­den­tial­i­ty claus­es.

Young called that stance tak­en by the Prime Min­is­ter and En­er­gy Min­is­ter con­cern­ing the Drag­on gas project fol­low­ing Maduro’s cap­ture, “sim­ply an il­lus­tra­tion of hypocrisy and irony as they both spent years try­ing to de­rail it from be­com­ing a re­al­i­ty. “