An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal has con­firmed that T&T is ex­plor­ing op­tions to main­tain op­er­a­tions at Nu­trien’s fa­cil­i­ty on the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate, fol­low­ing the ex­pi­ra­tion of the nat­ur­al gas sup­ply con­tract with the Cana­di­an petro­chem­i­cal gi­ant on Thurs­day.

In an in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Mooni­lal said there were in­vestors who had ex­pressed strong in­ter­est in tak­ing over the fa­cil­i­ty.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, Mooni­lal out­lined the min­istry’s on­go­ing en­gage­ment with Nu­trien and the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC), un­der the su­per­vi­sion of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar. He said dis­cus­sions have been on­go­ing for sev­er­al months re­gard­ing the op­er­a­tions at Point Lisas, in­clud­ing broad­er con­sid­er­a­tions of Nu­trien’s in­vest­ment port­fo­lio in the coun­try.

“I’m not at lib­er­ty to speak in de­tail, but these mat­ters arose be­cause of the neg­li­gence and dis­re­gard of the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion. The last ad­min­is­tra­tion failed to ne­go­ti­ate and rene­go­ti­ate agree­ments con­cern­ing port user fees and nat­ur­al gas sales arrange­ments, leav­ing crit­i­cal is­sues un­re­solved for two to three years. We have been ac­tive­ly en­gag­ing with Nu­trien, not on­ly re­gard­ing their cur­rent op­er­a­tions but al­so in ex­plor­ing fu­ture projects across the coun­try,” Mooni­lal said.

The min­is­ter said the po­ten­tial in­vestors in Nu­trien’s fa­cil­i­ty have sig­nalled a will­ing­ness to main­tain op­er­a­tions and par­tic­i­pate in own­er­ship of the as­set, which could pro­vide con­ti­nu­ity for work­ers and pre­vent the fa­cil­i­ty from be­com­ing a dis­tressed as­set.

“In­vestors are lit­er­al­ly look­ing to break down the door to get in­to T&T at this time. We are man­ag­ing busi­ness trans­par­ent­ly, seek­ing the best deal for the peo­ple of this coun­try,” he said.

The plant’s clo­sure came af­ter the nat­ur­al gas con­tract be­tween NGC and Nu­trien end­ed, with valves ful­ly shut off on Thurs­day, ef­fec­tive­ly pre­vent­ing the com­pa­ny from op­er­at­ing. The com­pa­ny’s de­ci­sion has placed ap­prox­i­mate­ly 600 work­ers at risk of los­ing their jobs.

Mooni­lal as­sured that dis­cus­sions re­gard­ing the wel­fare of the work­ers are on­go­ing, not­ing that some po­ten­tial in­vestors have ex­pressed readi­ness to keep all staff on board.

He al­so ad­dressed crit­i­cism from the for­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Stu­art Young, dis­miss­ing claims that the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion would de­ter in­vestors. He stressed that, con­trary to such as­ser­tions, T&T is at­tract­ing in­ter­est from in­vestors ea­ger to par­tic­i­pate in the coun­try’s en­er­gy sec­tor.

Mean­while, in a state­ment yes­ter­day NGC em­pha­sised that Nu­trien’s de­ci­sion to close its op­er­a­tions was dri­ven sole­ly by its prof­it mo­tives, with­out re­gard for the in­ter­ests of the coun­try or its peo­ple. The state-owned com­pa­ny said Nu­trien was giv­en every op­por­tu­ni­ty to con­tin­ue op­er­a­tions, in­clud­ing main­tain­ing lega­cy pier user rates and a long-term gas sup­ply arrange­ment.

“It is quite rich for the for­mer Prime Min­is­ter and for­mer Min­is­ter of En­er­gy to raise the is­sue of non-re­new­al of down­stream gas con­tracts,” the NGC said.

“Un­der their tenure, pier user con­tracts were al­lowed to ex­pire since 2018, per­mit­ting down­stream petro­chem­i­cal com­pa­nies to en­joy lega­cy rates up to the present.

“The fail­ure to trig­ger es­ca­la­tion claus­es in these con­tracts led to loss­es ex­ceed­ing TT$500 mil­lion for the peo­ple of this coun­try. De­spite this, Nu­trien was al­lowed to en­joy lega­cy rates un­til the end of 2025. The com­pa­ny, how­ev­er, chose to en­force its threat to shut down op­er­a­tions, hop­ing pub­lic pres­sure would force the gov­ern­ment to yield to its de­mands.”

NGC said it and the Min­istry of En­er­gy con­duct­ed five meet­ings with Nu­trien to re­solve is­sues sur­round­ing pier user charges. While Nu­trien fo­cused on prof­it con­cerns, the min­istry main­tained a fo­cus on pro­tect­ing na­tion­al in­ter­ests and safe­guard­ing jobs, NGC said.

NGC al­so high­light­ed the im­por­tance of fi­nal­is­ing up­stream gas sup­ply arrange­ments be­fore com­mit­ting to long-term down­stream con­tracts, a pre­cau­tion aimed at pre­vent­ing li­a­bil­i­ties or loss­es.

NGC said con­trary to the im­pres­sion be­ing ped­dled in cer­tain quar­ters about the loss of for­eign ex­change, most petro­chem­i­cal pro­duc­ers from the Point Lisas Es­tate do not re­mit their US dol­lar rev­enues to T&T, but in­stead di­vert the same to for­eign ac­counts. It said sev­er­al of these com­pa­nies fund their lo­cal ex­pens­es us­ing TT dol­lar bor­row­ings from lo­cal banks and fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions.

It said de­spite Nu­trien’s abrupt shut­down of op­er­a­tions in Oc­to­ber 2025, NGC has been able to re­lo­cate this tranche of gas to oth­er down­stream cus­tomers and ful­fil its al­lo­ca­tion to At­lantic LNG.

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les-Robin­son yes­ter­day de­scribed the ter­mi­na­tion of Nu­trien’s gas sup­ply as “an­oth­er dis­as­trous chap­ter in the mis­man­age­ment of the coun­try’s en­er­gy sec­tor.

“The mis­han­dling of ne­go­ti­a­tions over gas sup­ply and port fees is now cost­ing jobs, in­vest­ment and na­tion­al cred­i­bil­i­ty,” she said in a news re­lease.

“Nu­trien, which has been a re­li­able part­ner for 45 years, seems poised to end its op­er­a­tions, threat­en­ing ir­re­versible dam­age to our en­er­gy sec­tor and our econ­o­my from the high­est lev­els down to every­day cit­i­zens. This is the re­sult of failed ne­go­ti­a­tions, poor man­age­ment and a con­fronta­tion­al ap­proach by the Gov­ern­ment.”

The Op­po­si­tion Leader warned that the shut­down could have far-reach­ing con­se­quences, in­clud­ing neg­a­tive im­pacts on GDP, trade, for­eign ex­change earn­ings, gov­ern­ment rev­enue and em­ploy­ment. She al­so raised con­cern over the do­mes­tic sup­ply of fer­tilis­ers, es­pe­cial­ly urea, crit­i­cal for lo­cal agri­cul­ture. Re­ports in­di­cate the clo­sure has al­ready led to short­ages and price in­creas­es, af­fect­ing farm­ers and po­ten­tial­ly food prices na­tion­wide.

Beck­les said with the econ­o­my con­tract­ing, mas­sive un­em­ploy­ment per­sists, the pop­u­la­tion is be­ing pun­ished with fines and fees, and the bur­den on the coun­try has grown sig­nif­i­cant­ly heav­ier.

She said the in­com­pe­tence and ig­no­rance of the Gov­ern­ment is caus­ing dan­ger­ous, self-in­flict­ed wounds to this coun­try, which can re­verse decades of gains and hard-fought progress, which ben­e­fit­ed the peo­ple of this coun­try.

Mean­while, re­spond­ing to NGC’s me­dia re­lease which blamed Nu­trien for the pro­longed shut­down, Young said it re­vealed a mis­un­der­stand­ing of how the Pt Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate fits in­to T&T’s wider for­eign in­vest­ment strat­e­gy.

He took is­sue with the com­par­i­son drawn be­tween gas sup­ply con­tracts and port ac­cess arrange­ments, ar­gu­ing that Pt Lisas’ in­fra­struc­ture is “meant to be part of the wider for­mu­la of at­tract­ing and main­tain­ing for­eign in­vest­ment in the form of bil­lion dol­lar plants in Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

He said those plants pur­chase nat­ur­al gas, em­ploy thou­sands of work­ers, pay tax­es and gen­er­ate for­eign ex­change, and that such arrange­ments can­not be treat­ed in iso­la­tion.