Massy Gas has se­cured an al­ter­na­tive car­bon diox­ide (CO2)sup­ply through a new de­liv­ery arrange­ment with Pro­man, fol­low­ing the shut­down of Nu­trien’s Trinidad Ni­tro­gen op­er­a­tions at Point Lisas.

In a joint state­ment is­sued yes­ter­day, Pro­man, Massy Gas, the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC), PLIPDE­CO, and oth­er gov­ern­ment agen­cies con­firmed that the new sup­ply line has been com­mis­sioned on sched­ule and at no ad­di­tion­al cost to cus­tomers.

Pro­man man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Anand Rag­bir said, “Our en­gi­neers, op­er­a­tions, and com­mer­cial teams worked around the clock to com­plete the nec­es­sary en­gi­neer­ing works and tie-ins to our plants in just a few days, demon­strat­ing Pro­man’s on­go­ing com­mit­ment to na­tion­al needs.”

Guardian Me­dia asked Pro­man if they could per­ma­nent­ly con­tin­ue to sup­ply CO2 to Massy. They did not re­spond.

Massy Gas CEO Mar­lon Mil­let added, “We have suc­cess­ful­ly ac­ti­vat­ed a com­pre­hen­sive con­tin­gency plan. This plan en­ables us to re­sume, main­tain, and pro­vide re­dun­dan­cy in the CO2 sup­ply to our cus­tomers.”

The agree­ment comes a week af­ter dis­rup­tions caused by Nu­trien’s shut­down and its re­fusal to pay US$28 mil­lion in dis­put­ed fees to Na­tion­al En­er­gy, chaired by Ger­ald Ramdeen. The im­passe led to port ac­cess re­stric­tions, af­fect­ing about 350 con­tract work­ers and dis­rupt­ing in­dus­tri­al and med­ical CO2 sup­plies.

For­mer prime min­is­ter and en­er­gy min­is­ter Stu­art Young said the sit­u­a­tion re­flects broad­er in­sta­bil­i­ty which will have a knock on ef­fect at oth­er com­pa­nies with­in the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate.

In a video mes­sage post­ed on his Face­book page yes­ter­day, he said, “So when you come now and you uni­lat­er­al­ly in­crease elec­tric­i­ty rates as we just saw in the last bud­get, that in­creas­es the cost to these com­pa­nies.” He added, “Then you go now and you try to ex­tort and in­crease oth­er rates re­lat­ed to the es­tate. What does it do to Trinidad and To­ba­go? It makes us very, very un­com­pet­i­tive.”

He warned that the dis­pute could have far-reach­ing eco­nom­ic con­se­quences. “If these com­pa­nies shut down their plants … the Gov­ern­ment is go­ing to lose rev­enue, for­eign ex­change, and jobs,” he said. “I hope and I pray that they don’t pick up their plants and go else­where.” —Ke­jan Haynes