An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

For­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Stu­art Young has ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of di­vert­ing nat­ur­al gas from petro­chem­i­cal com­pa­nies at Point Lisas to At­lantic LNG, re­ject­ing Min­is­ter of En­er­gy Roodal Mooni­lal’s ex­pla­na­tion that NGC has main­tained its con­trac­tu­al gas al­lo­ca­tions.

In a so­cial me­dia post yes­ter­day, Young re­spond­ed to Mooni­lal’s state­ments in Par­lia­ment last Fri­day, where the En­er­gy Min­is­ter de­nied there had been a change in NGC’s gas al­lo­ca­tion pol­i­cy or a di­ver­sion of gas from Point Lisas cus­tomers to At­lantic LNG.

Young ar­gued that the 95 per cent con­trac­tu­al ful­fil­ment fig­ure cit­ed by Mooni­lal did not tell the full sto­ry be­cause the shut­down of Nu­trien and Methanex had freed up ad­di­tion­al gas.

“NGC buys its gas from BP, Shell, Peren­co, EOG, Touch­stone, and then they take that gas, the first place they have to sup­ply gas to is pro­duc­tion of elec­tric­i­ty,” Young said.

“Af­ter that, tra­di­tion­al­ly they sell the gas to the petro­chem­i­cal com­pa­nies at Point Lisas and then to At­lantic LNG for their share.”

Young main­tained that gas had been di­vert­ed, de­spite Mooni­lal’s par­lia­men­tary re­sponse.

“They have been di­vert­ing gas. So Mooni­lal comes with an an­swer that 95 per cent of the con­trac­tu­al ful­fil­ment has hap­pened. And then im­por­tant­ly he goes on to say those who are tak­ing gas from NGC have got­ten over 33 per cent more than they con­tract­ed to get.”

Young at­trib­uted the high­er vol­umes re­ceived by some petro­chem­i­cal cus­tomers to the shut­down of Nu­trien and Methanex.

“You know the rea­son why that is hap­pen­ing? Nu­trien and Metanex plants have shut down. So there­fore there is more gas avail­able be­cause Nu­trien and Metanex are not tak­ing gas any­more.”

He used a hy­po­thet­i­cal al­lo­ca­tion of 100 mol­e­cules of gas to ex­plain his po­si­tion, ar­gu­ing that if six plants were re­ceiv­ing gas and two plants con­sum­ing 30 mol­e­cules shut down, the re­main­ing four would have ac­cess to the ad­di­tion­al sup­ply.

Mooni­lal, how­ev­er, told Par­lia­ment on Fri­day that NGC had not changed its al­lo­ca­tion of gas to petro­chem­i­cal cus­tomers at the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate and was not aware of any di­ver­sion to At­lantic LNG.

“NGC has not changed its al­lo­ca­tion of gas to petro­chem­i­cal cus­tomers at the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate and is not aware of any di­ver­sion of gas from those cus­tomers to the At­lantic LNG fa­cil­i­ty.”

The En­er­gy Min­is­ter stat­ed NGC had ful­ly met its con­trac­tu­al gas sup­ply oblig­a­tions to do­mes­tic cus­tomers, in­clud­ing petro­chem­i­cal, non-petro­chem­i­cal, light in­dus­tri­al, com­mer­cial and pow­er gen­er­a­tion cus­tomers from 2025 through 2026.

“Dur­ing the same pe­ri­od, NGC has con­tin­ued to sat­is­fy its en­ti­tle­ment oblig­a­tions to the At­lantic fa­cil­i­ty.”

Mooni­lal in­di­cat­ed that re­newed gas sup­ply con­tracts with down­stream petro­chem­i­cal cus­tomers in 2026 main­tained dai­ly con­tract quan­ti­ties at lev­els con­sis­tent with pre­vi­ous agree­ments, with some in­creased.

He not­ed the con­tract for NGC’s largest petro­chem­i­cal cus­tomer by vol­ume was re­newed with a dai­ly con­trac­tu­al quan­ti­ty ap­prox­i­mate­ly 16 per cent high­er than un­der the ex­pired con­tract.

Mooni­lal al­so point­ed to op­er­a­tional prob­lems at Point Lisas, say­ing there had been 20 sep­a­rate down­stream plant up­sets or dis­rup­tions since Jan­u­ary 2026.

He said the in­ci­dents re­sult­ed in plants be­ing shut down or op­er­at­ing be­low con­trac­tu­al gas en­ti­tle­ments for rea­sons un­re­lat­ed to gas avail­abil­i­ty.

NGC ex­pe­ri­enced two gas sup­ply-re­lat­ed con­straints dur­ing 2026, Mooni­lal said, with on­ly one re­sult­ing in cur­tail­ments to petro­chem­i­cal cus­tomers.

“Petro­chem­i­cal cus­tomers re­ceived sup­plies be­low their con­trac­tu­al en­ti­tle­ments on on­ly 5 per cent of days, aris­ing from a sin­gle gas sup­ply con­straint as­so­ci­at­ed with a planned up­stream ac­tiv­i­ty that was co­or­di­nat­ed with the At­lantic Train Force sched­uled turn­around,” Mooni­lal said.

He al­so said petro­chem­i­cal cus­tomers had re­ceived ag­gre­gate gas vol­umes ap­prox­i­mate­ly 33 per cent above their con­trac­tu­al en­ti­tle­ments since Jan­u­ary, ex­clud­ing one cus­tomer whose off­take was con­strained by plant-re­lat­ed op­er­a­tional is­sues.

“Ac­cord­ing­ly, the avail­able da­ta demon­strates that petro­chem­i­cal cus­tomers at the Point Lisas in­dus­tri­al es­tate con­sis­tent­ly re­ceived gas sup­plies at or above their con­tract­ed DC­Qs through­out 2026,” the en­er­gy min­is­ter added.