An­drea Perez-Sobers
Se­nior Re­porter
an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal con­firmed dis­cus­sions be­tween the Gov­ern­ment and Cana­di­an fer­tilis­er gi­ant Nu­trien Ltd. re­main ac­tive, as both sides ex­plore the com­pa­ny’s fu­ture op­er­a­tions and po­ten­tial new in­vest­ments in the coun­try.
Speak­ing with Busi­ness Guardian on Tues­day af­ter­noon, Dr Mooni­lal con­firmed that de­spite the on­go­ing sus­pen­sion of Nu­trien’s ni­tro­gen (am­mo­nia and urea) op­er­a­tions, com­mu­ni­ca­tion has not bro­ken down. “We con­tin­ue to have di­a­logue with them on their fu­ture and in­vest­ment pos­si­bil­i­ties in T&T,” he said. “They have not closed the door on T&T, and we have not closed the door on Nu­trien.”
Nu­trien an­nounced a con­trolled shut­down of its Trinidad Ni­tro­gen op­er­a­tions on Oc­to­ber 23, cit­ing port ac­cess re­stric­tions im­posed by the Na­tion­al En­er­gy Cor­po­ra­tion and a lack of re­li­able and eco­nom­ic nat­ur­al gas sup­ply. The com­pa­ny al­so con­tin­ues to dis­pute claims that it owes sev­er­al mil­lion dol­lars in retroac­tive port fees, a dis­agree­ment that has stalled progress.
While Dr Mooni­lal de­clined to pre­dict whether Nu­trien would re­sume full op­er­a­tions be­fore the end of the year, he said the Gov­ern­ment re­mains com­mit­ted to main­tain­ing open com­mu­ni­ca­tion and ex­plor­ing ar­eas of col­lab­o­ra­tion be­yond en­er­gy. “We con­tin­ue to talk about their strate­gic in­volve­ment in Trinidad and To­ba­go, both in the en­er­gy sec­tor and in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor,” he ex­plained.
Mooni­lal high­light­ed the on­go­ing dis­cus­sions in­clude po­ten­tial part­ner­ships that could see Nu­trien play a more in­te­grat­ed role in the coun­try’s food pro­duc­tion ef­forts, part of a wider gov­ern­ment strat­e­gy to link the en­er­gy and agri­cul­tur­al sec­tors.
When asked about the com­pa­ny’s pre­vi­ous­ly in­di­cat­ed De­cem­ber 31, 2025, time­line for re­view­ing its op­er­a­tions, Dr Mooni­lal said he would not spec­u­late on whether the com­pa­ny would ex­tend its stay or scale back. “I can’t pre­dict any move­ment of Nu­trien or any com­pa­ny,” he said, “but we con­tin­ue to talk about their strate­gic in­volve­ment.”
Sources at Nu­trien told the Busi­ness Guardian that the min­is­ter was ex­pect­ed to meet with the Cana­di­an com­pa­ny’s man­age­ment onTues­day, but that the meet­ing was pushed back to to­day (Thurs­day).
The source said it is crit­i­cal that a meet­ing takes place soon.
Two weeks ago, Guardian Me­dia spoke to the min­is­ter, who was asked whether the stick­ing point of retroac­tive port fees had been re­solved. Mooni­lal de­clined to go in­to de­tail. “These are mat­ters that are re­al­ly con­fi­den­tial that we are dis­cussing,” he said.
He con­firmed that the Gov­ern­ment had al­ready made arrange­ments to man­age the im­pact of Nu­trien’s clo­sure, par­tic­u­lar­ly re­gard­ing car­bon diox­ide (CO₂) sup­ply, which had been af­fect­ed by the com­pa­ny’s de­ci­sion to sus­pend op­er­a­tions last month.

Gov­ern­ment eyes broad­er in­vest­ment strat­e­gy

Dr Mooni­lal em­pha­sised that the Gov­ern­ment’s ap­proach to Point Lisas goes be­yond a sin­gle com­pa­ny, with an eye to­ward at­tract­ing di­ver­si­fied in­vest­ment to en­sure long-term sus­tain­abil­i­ty for the es­tate.
He said the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries has been en­gaged in dis­cus­sions with sev­er­al in­ter­na­tion­al firms and fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions to gen­er­ate new op­por­tu­ni­ties for growth and mod­erni­sa­tion.

“We are al­ways in dis­cus­sions with sev­er­al in­ter­na­tion­al com­pa­nies now in terms of in­vest­ment and busi­ness cre­ation on the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate and in La Brea as well,” he said.
These talks, he added, in­clude both up­stream and down­stream prospects and seek to align with T&T’s on­go­ing ef­forts to op­ti­mise its gas util­i­sa­tion and ex­pand in­dus­tri­al out­put.
Point Lisas has long been a cor­ner­stone of the na­tion­al econ­o­my, host­ing ma­jor am­mo­nia, methanol and steel pro­duc­ers. How­ev­er, re­cur­ring is­sues sur­round­ing nat­ur­al gas avail­abil­i­ty and con­tract pric­ing have chal­lenged op­er­a­tors in re­cent years, prompt­ing clo­sures and cur­tail­ments that have rip­pled across the econ­o­my.
Mooni­lal’s re­marks come at a time when the glob­al fer­tilis­er mar­ket is fac­ing re­newed scruti­ny over sup­ply chain vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties. Nu­trien’s de­ci­sion to idle op­er­a­tions in Trinidad has re­ver­ber­at­ed across in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets, draw­ing con­cern from agri­cul­tur­al stake­hold­ers, par­tic­u­lar­ly in North Amer­i­ca.

The shut­down has not gone un­no­ticed abroad. On Tues­day, Farm Fu­tures, a lead­ing U.S. agri­cul­ture pub­li­ca­tion, re­port­ed that Nu­trien’s con­tin­ued in­ac­tiv­i­ty in Trinidad could af­fect glob­al am­mo­nia avail­abil­i­ty if the sit­u­a­tion per­sists.
The ar­ti­cle not­ed that with op­er­a­tions now in their third week of sus­pen­sion, any pro­longed dis­rup­tion could tight­en sup­plies and po­ten­tial­ly dri­ve up prices world­wide.

While the US re­mains large­ly self-suf­fi­cient in an­hy­drous am­mo­nia pro­duc­tion, an­a­lysts cau­tion that the glob­al fer­tilis­er bal­ance is del­i­cate and vul­ner­a­ble to re­gion­al shocks.
Uni­ver­si­ty of Mis­souri agri­cul­tur­al econ­o­mist Ben Brown told Farm Fu­tures that while the short-term im­pact on US farm­ers is like­ly to be lim­it­ed, a longer shut­down could shift glob­al pric­ing dy­nam­ics.

“If the shut­down is pro­longed, it could con­tin­ue to shrink the avail­able sup­ply of am­mo­nia to the glob­al mar­ket,” Brown said. He added that “prices for do­mes­tic (US) pro­duc­ers can be in­creased if glob­al users are will­ing to pay more. Am­mo­nia is cur­rent­ly one of the cheap­est glob­al forms of ni­tro­gen, so there is up­side price po­ten­tial.”

The re­port al­so high­light­ed that North Amer­i­can farm­ers are al­ready un­der strain from high fer­tilis­er costs and geopo­lit­i­cal pres­sures. In­creas­es in ni­tro­gen prices could fur­ther com­pli­cate plan­ning for the up­com­ing plant­i­ng sea­sons, es­pe­cial­ly for pro­duc­ers al­ready pay­ing el­e­vat­ed rates for phos­phate and potash.

T&T is one of the world’s key ex­porters of am­mo­nia, and any pro­duc­tion dis­rup­tion here has im­pli­ca­tions for the in­ter­na­tion­al fer­tilis­er trade. The coun­try’s gas-based in­dus­tri­al out­put re­mains a vi­tal source of for­eign ex­change, even as do­mes­tic con­sump­tion and glob­al com­pe­ti­tion cre­ate pres­sure to main­tain sta­bil­i­ty and in­vest­ment con­fi­dence.

This week, for­mer min­is­ter of en­er­gy Stu­art Young crit­i­cised the Gov­ern­ment’s han­dling of the Nu­trien is­sue in a so­cial me­dia post, sug­gest­ing that the sit­u­a­tion re­flect­ed poor­ly on the coun­try’s glob­al im­age.

“I hope Min­is­ter Mooni­lal and Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) chair­man Ger­ald Ramdeen un­der­stand the im­pli­ca­tions of their ac­tions. This is how T&T is be­ing por­trayed glob­al­ly due to a com­plete lack of un­der­stand­ing and a se­ri­ous dose of in­com­pe­tence,” wrote Young.

Drag­on gas deal still alive

Turn­ing to an­oth­er ma­jor en­er­gy mat­ter, Dr Mooni­lal as­sured that the Drag­on gas project, T&T’s near-bor­der ini­tia­tive with Venezuela, re­mains on the ta­ble.
He de­scribed on­go­ing dis­cus­sions among all par­ties as “del­i­cate but ac­tive,” not­ing that sig­nif­i­cant tech­ni­cal and com­mer­cial work con­tin­ues un­der the con­straints of the US Of­fice of For­eign As­sets Con­trol (OFAC) li­cence, which al­lows lim­it­ed col­lab­o­ra­tion un­til next April.
“We con­tin­ue to meet and dis­cuss that is­sue with all stake­hold­ers,” the Min­is­ter said. “It re­quires a lot of be­hind-the-scenes work in terms of ap­pli­ca­tions, field de­vel­op­ment plans, and com­mer­cial arrange­ments.”

While progress has been slow­er than ini­tial­ly pro­ject­ed, Mooni­lal con­firmed that the li­cence re­mains valid and that the Gov­ern­ment ex­pects to ad­vance the project be­fore the end of the year. “We are work­ing with the li­cence that we have now, and we ex­pect a good time to progress that by De­cem­ber or so,” he ex­plained.

He ac­knowl­edged that the process in­volves “an enor­mous amount of be­hind-the-scenes work” to co­or­di­nate pro­duc­tion, tech­ni­cal plan­ning, and com­mer­cial frame­works among part­ners.

De­spite the geopo­lit­i­cal sen­si­tiv­i­ties and lo­gis­ti­cal chal­lenges, Mooni­lal reaf­firmed that the Drag­on project is still part of T&T’s fu­ture en­er­gy land­scape and that every ef­fort is be­ing made to move it for­ward un­der ex­ist­ing le­gal and diplo­mat­ic pa­ra­me­ters.