Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

In the still­ness of a Sat­ur­day morn­ing, a large ship docked on the wa­ter­front near the Hy­att Re­gency in Port-of-Spain. There are many ships that dock on those wa­ters week­ly, but this ves­sel presents a glimpse in­to an in­dus­try long­ing to be dis­cov­ered in this coun­try.

The Fortes­cue Green Pi­o­neer has slow­ly made its way from Belem, Brazil (where the UN Cli­mate Change Con­fer­ence took place last No­vem­ber) to the Port of Port-of-Spain. It will spend a week in T&T wa­ters. How­ev­er, the orig­i­nal sched­ule was a mere pit stop for fu­el be­fore sail­ing high­er up the Caribbean chain. That changed when in­dus­try lead­ers learned of the ves­sel’s unique­ness.

The Green Pi­o­neer is the world’s first am­mo­nia-pow­ered ves­sel, de­signed to test and demon­strate the vi­a­bil­i­ty of am­mo­nia as a ze­ro-emis­sion fu­el in the ship­ping in­dus­try. It was de­vel­oped and de­signed by the Aus­tralian min­ing com­pa­ny, Fortes­cue. In 2025, it was list­ed by Time Mag­a­zine as one of the best in­ven­tions of the year: “a sea­wor­thy so­lu­tion to ship­ping pol­lu­tion.”

The word am­mo­nia lit a bulb in the heads of Trinida­di­ans who wel­comed the ves­sel.

This coun­try is a glob­al leader in am­mo­nia pro­duc­tion and ex­ports, boast­ing eleven world-scale am­mo­nia plants with a to­tal an­nu­al ca­pac­i­ty of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 5.2 to 5.67 mil­lion met­ric tonnes. The na­tion ranks as the world’s largest net ex­porter of am­mo­nia, fre­quent­ly con­tribut­ing 15 to 20 per cent of the to­tal glob­al­ly trans­port­ed am­mo­nia. If the mar­itime in­dus­try de­cides to go in the di­rec­tion of am­mo­nia-fu­elled ves­sels, T&T is in a po­si­tion ge­o­graph­i­cal­ly and lo­gis­ti­cal­ly to be a gas sta­tion for ships in this re­gion.

Philip Julien, chair­man of Ke­nes­jay Green Lim­it­ed, who has led the coun­try’s thrust in­to low-car­bon and green hy­dro­gen as an ad­di­tion­al feed­stock for the petro­chem­i­cal sec­tor, told the Sun­day Guardian, “This re­al­ly rep­re­sents a strate­gic cross­roads that we’re at.”

He hailed these al­ter­na­tive ma­rine fu­els as “a new and emerg­ing mar­ket” that T&T has the po­ten­tial to cre­ate an in­dus­try out of. This in­cludes it be­com­ing a re­gion­al hub for both tra­di­tion­al and a va­ri­ety of low­er-car­bon ma­rine fu­els, with one ex­am­ple be­ing the pro­duc­tion, stor­age, bunker­ing, and ex­port of am­mo­nia.

Head of Ma­rine Sys­tems and Green Ship­ping at Fortes­cue, An­drew Hoare, agreed with Julien’s as­sess­ment. In an in­ter­view with the Sun­day Guardian, he said, “I think there’s a very, very sig­nif­i­cant com­mer­cial im­por­tance here. We can go to a beau­ti­ful, love­ly Caribbean is­land, but they’re not go­ing to nec­es­sar­i­ly see the rel­e­vance as much as Trinidad and To­ba­go have, be­cause you’ve got one of the most im­por­tant el­e­ments. You’ve got an in­fra­struc­ture that ex­ists to­day. It’s been around for quite some time... It’s al­ways been a key trans-ship­ment hub. It’s been a key oil-fu­elling hub. I think it’s a great op­por­tu­ni­ty.”

This week, stu­dents from var­i­ous uni­ver­si­ties will have a tour of the ship to learn about its key el­e­ments. Hoare is look­ing for­ward to this week in Trinidad. He added, “I think that’s go­ing to be one of, hope­ful­ly, the most warm­ing el­e­ments of the run to Trinidad and To­ba­go. It is to out­reach with stake­hold­ers there. I’m sure there’s go­ing to be high­er-lev­el, maybe gov­ern­ment-po­lit­i­cal types there as well, or the in­dus­try types, but I think prob­a­bly the most warm­ing will be the fact that we’re not just steer­ing the boats at the top. We are try­ing to cre­ate a mar­ket, change a mar­ket, and I think in the case of T&T, we’re try­ing to en­sure that you re­tain your po­si­tion in that mar­ket.”

They see it as an op­por­tu­ni­ty for them to show­case the work they’re do­ing in am­mo­nia-pow­ered ships. The Green Pi­o­neer re­mains the on­ly ship that has ac­tu­al­ly proven in­ter­na­tion­al move­ment us­ing am­mo­nia as a fu­el. How­ev­er, Hoare said there are small pi­lots hap­pen­ing in the ports, and their first ships don’t come out un­til the end of the year.

“I think the ex­cit­ing part of it is that it shows us a tan­gi­ble ex­am­ple of an al­ter­na­tive and emerg­ing fu­el that the world is look­ing at for the mar­itime in­dus­try,” Julien said.

Pro­man is one of the mul­ti-na­tion­al com­pa­nies in T&T pro­duc­ing am­mo­nia. In a con­ver­sa­tion with the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian last week, its Deputy Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor, Giselle Thomp­son, said her com­pa­ny has been us­ing methanol as a fu­el for their mar­itime ser­vices. How­ev­er, she added, “There is like­ly room in the mar­ket in terms of the mar­itime sec­tor for any fu­el that is low­er in car­bon in­ten­si­ty, as the sec­tor has to move to some of those cli­mate goals and the tar­gets put out by the In­ter­na­tion­al Mar­itime Or­gan­i­sa­tion (IMO). I’m sure there is room in the mar­ket for am­mo­nia-pow­ered ships, LNG-pow­ered ships, and methanol-pow­ered ships.”

Hoare and his team will em­bark on a Caribbean tour af­ter their T&T vis­it. When asked why this re­gion was so im­por­tant to their en­deav­ours, he an­swered, “Our group res­onates close­ly with the Caribbean states be­cause we’re very close to the South Pa­cif­ic is­land states of Aus­tralia. There are cer­tain sim­i­lar­i­ties. We’ve all seen the ter­ri­ble chal­lenges in Ja­maica last year with poor weath­er, which we could prob­a­bly say may be cli­mate-re­lat­ed. Like­wise, we see first­hand in the South Pa­cif­ic is­lands the im­pact of ris­ing sea lev­els there, with com­mu­ni­ties al­ready be­ing dis­placed. Al­though we’re more aligned and cog­nizant of the South Pa­cif­ic, I think by be­ing in the Caribbean, it gives us a chance to lis­ten and to show the ship be­yond a Pow­er­Point pre­sen­ta­tion.”

Julien be­lieves the Gov­ern­ment’s Blue­print Plan aligns with the po­ten­tial of this mar­itime in­dus­try change. How­ev­er, when ques­tioned how far in­to the fu­ture such a de­vel­op­ment could be­come a re­al­i­ty, he stat­ed, “I think the hori­zon match­es the de­vel­op­ment time. That’s the best way to put it, so this isn’t so far off that we can­not start with the de­vel­op­ment work now in or­der to de­vel­op those things that would make Trinidad a com­mer­cial­ly vi­able and at­trac­tive port of choice.”

It comes as the In­ter­na­tion­al Mar­itime Or­gan­i­sa­tion ac­tive­ly pur­sues a fu­ture for the ship­ping in­dus­try void of car­bon-emit­ting fu­els. Last Oc­to­ber, it was forced to walk back on a de­ci­sion to ini­ti­ate the world’s first glob­al car­bon pric­ing sys­tem on any in­ter­na­tion­al pol­luter - glob­al ship­ping. It was seen as a ma­jor set­back in meet­ing the mar­itime in­dus­try’s de­car­bon­i­sa­tion tar­gets. The Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion in the Unit­ed States was a staunch crit­ic of the move.

How­ev­er, while the bat­tle for a net-ze­ro fu­ture rages geopo­lit­i­cal­ly, an op­por­tu­ni­ty seems to have sailed on­to T&T’s shores. The chal­lenge for every gov­ern­ment has been to see (and plan) for down the road as op­posed to ex­tract­ing the fi­nite joys of the nat­ur­al gas rich­es now. Julien, who has cham­pi­oned low-car­bon and green hy­dro­gen de­vel­op­ment in this coun­try, now sees an ad­di­tion­al op­por­tu­ni­ty for the coun­try’s eco­nom­ic ex­pan­sion.