Yes­ter­day, Jan­u­ary 20, 2026, is like­ly to be re­mem­bered as an im­por­tant day in the fi­nan­cial his­to­ry of Trinidad and To­ba­go, as it was the day on which the coun­try marked the end of an era that, by and large, was re­mark­ably pos­i­tive for the econ­o­my and its pop­u­la­tion.

The era just end­ed was the pe­ri­od when T&T based its in­dus­tri­al de­vel­op­ment on the avail­abil­i­ty of low-cost nat­ur­al gas, which drove the de­vel­op­ment of in­dus­tri­al es­tates at Point Lisas and Union in La Brea that pro­duced a range of petro­chem­i­cals, in­clud­ing am­mo­nia, urea and methanol.

Low-cost nat­ur­al gas led to the de­vel­op­ment of T&T’s four-train liq­ue­fac­tion fa­cil­i­ty in Point Fortin, which be­came the cen­tre­piece of its de­vel­op­ment. But, cru­cial­ly, low-cost nat­ur­al gas al­so pro­mot­ed the growth of a man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor that used the com­mod­i­ty to pro­duce a wide range of snacks, bev­er­ages and oth­er con­sum­ables sold in su­per­mar­kets through­out the Caribbean re­gion.

Quite clear­ly, then, T&T’s in­dus­tri­al de­vel­op­ment was three-pronged, with tax rev­enue and for­eign ex­change be­ing gen­er­at­ed by the ex­port of petro­chem­i­cals, LNG and man­u­fac­tured goods.

The un­stat­ed premise of this ap­proach to the coun­try’s de­vel­op­ment was that if one or even two of the three for­eign ex­change earn­ers were ham­pered by ex­ter­nal de­vel­op­ments—such as the coun­try is ex­pe­ri­enc­ing now with low methanol and LNG prices—the man­u­fac­tur­ing third leg would be able to make up some of the dif­fer­ence.

In pro­nounc­ing the end of the low-cost nat­ur­al gas era, Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) chair­man Ger­ald Ramdeen made clear that lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ers had ben­e­fit­ed from ten years of high­ly sub­sidised nat­ur­al gas, but that the present board could not con­tin­ue it.

With­out pre­sent­ing any ev­i­dence, Mr Ramdeen based his need to in­crease the price of nat­ur­al gas sold to man­u­fac­tur­ers and petro­chem­i­cal pro­duc­ers by be­tween 60 and 80 per cent, on the “fact” that the nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­ers—such as bpTT, Shell, EOG Re­sources, Wood­side and Peren­co—had in­creased the av­er­age price of gas sold to NGC. But have the up­stream nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­ers in­creased the cost of the com­mod­i­ty to T&T’s mo­nop­oly ag­gre­ga­tor and dis­trib­u­tor by be­tween 60 and 80 per cent? That is not like­ly, as all of T&T’s nat­ur­al gas cur­rent­ly comes from shal­low wa­ter reser­voirs, even if from small­er pools than pre­vi­ous­ly, con­nect­ed to the ex­ist­ing off­shore pipeline in­fra­struc­ture.

It is much more plau­si­ble that Gov­ern­ment, wor­ried by the rapid de­ple­tion in the coun­try’s net of­fi­cial for­eign re­serves, has de­cid­ed it needs to earn more for­eign ex­change from T&T’s en­er­gy sec­tor and that NGC is the quick­est means of do­ing so.

If that is the case, it is hoped that it has con­duct­ed a thor­ough, ex­ten­sive, deep and in­de­pen­dent cost-ben­e­fit analy­sis that weighs the in­cre­men­tal rev­enue NGC would gain from high­er nat­ur­al gas prices, against the loss of com­pet­i­tive­ness of T&T’s gas-us­ing man­u­fac­tur­ers and the petro­chem­i­cal sec­tor, along with the re­duc­tion in rev­enue and for­eign ex­change earn­ings from both sec­tors.

Al­so of key con­cern is the im­pact high­er nat­ur­al gas prices to the lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor will have on the cost of liv­ing in T&T. Quite ob­vi­ous­ly, if the pro­posed in­crease is im­ple­ment­ed by the end of this month, that will have a pro­found im­pact on the price of a wide range of goods on the lo­cal mar­ket. Such knock-on in­creas­es would dec­i­mate the stan­dard of liv­ing of thou­sands of work­ing peo­ple, with po­ten­tial­ly neg­a­tive reper­cus­sions for the so­ci­ety.

In all the cir­cum­stances, it is hoped that Gov­ern­ment re­flects on the pro­posed price in­crease, paus­es it, and re­opens con­sul­ta­tion with key stake­hold­ers with an open mind.