The worrying news that more petrochemical plants are shutting down in T&T poses another challenge to the economy and shows how vulnerable we have become to the vagaries of the international market.
It was the vision and leadership of people like late Prime Minister Dr Eric Williams and technocrats like Professor Ken Julien, who saw an opportunity to take what at that time was a by-product of crude production and turn it into something valuable for T&T.
The discovery of lucrative oil fields off Trinidad's East Coast by the then Amoco, now BPTT, meant that along with the oil there was also natural gas.
To their credit, the then government saw an opportunity to create the largest industrial estate in the Caribbean and to dominate global markets as a low-cost petrochemical producer.
This move brought billions of US dollars in direct foreign investment, created a new source of substantial revenue outside oil, allowed for thousands of high-paying jobs to be created and brought new skills and expertise in plant construction and management to T&T, and we earned rents for our natural resources that were once being burnt away.
The advent of the shale revolution in the United States, however, changed the equation as abundant cheap gas is available in America, the very place most of this country's methanol and ammonia were being sold to.
The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic with the collapse of global markets for commodities have served to put another nail in the coffin of the sector that has for the last ten years seen its competitiveness eroded and for which we as a country have made so many missteps on we are now facing the possibility of the Point Lisas model no longer having relevance.
The attempt of the Manning administration to tax potential exploration and production to the point that T&T became so uncompetitive meant little drilling and exploration for gas happened for seven years (2003/2010).
After that, the UNC government tried to deny there was a gas shortage and it took them years before they could get the sector going again.
Then there was that now infamous Houston trip which led to the signing of natural gas agreements with the assistance of Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley. It must be noted that the PM's intervention came about because NGC could not reach agreement with the upstream companies on gas prices, afraid it would make the price it has to sell to the downstream uncompetitive.
Yesterday, NGC chairman Conrad Enill admitted the company has been quietly trying to renegotiate those contracts.
The reality is that almost a year ago, Dr Terrence Farrell warned we were at a point of inflection and needed to take measures to avoid the industry's collapse.
One hopes that in a time of crisis all players in the value chain will see the danger and take the hard decisions needed to ensure its survival because the alternative is an estate in ruin.