De­spite what Min­is­ter of En­er­gy Dr Roodal Mooni­lal de­scribed as warm dis­cus­sions with Cana­di­an petro­chem­i­cals com­pa­ny Nu­trien on Mon­day, he could not yes­ter­day pro­vide a time­line for the pos­si­ble restart of the com­pa­ny's ni­tro­gen com­plex at the Point Lisas in­dus­tri­al Es­tate.

On Mon­day, the Min­is­ter along with of­fi­cials from the NGC met with Nu­trien ex­ec­u­tives. He con­firmed dis­cus­sions were cen­tred around the com­pa­ny's port­fo­lio in T&T.

"I'm not at lib­er­ty to speak too much in de­tail on that mat­ter, but to in­di­cate that all par­ties end­ed the meet­ing with a very com­posed and a very strong and keen will­ing­ness to con­tin­ue our long stand­ing part­ner­ship and to work now with oth­er stake­hold­ers to en­sure that we re­turn the en­tire Point Lisa's op­er­a­tion to op­ti­mal pro­duc­tion in the short­est pos­si­ble time," said Mooni­lal when asked about the meet­ing at the Post Cab­i­net Press brief­ing.

Mooni­lal said, "We con­tin­ue to speak with Nu­trien and oth­ers con­cern­ing that is­sue at the plant, but it was a very, very warm and col­lab­o­ra­tive meet­ing ."

Nu­trien an­nounced and im­ple­ment­ed a tem­po­rary shut down of its Point Lisas op­er­a­tions in Oc­to­ber, cit­ing con­cerns about gas sup­ply and port ac­cess re­stric­tions. It was lat­er re­vealed that dur­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions with the NGC, the com­pa­ny ob­ject­ed to the im­ple­men­ta­tion of in­creased and retroac­tive port fees be­ing charged.

Nu­trien, at that time, was the sec­ond largest pro­duc­er of am­mo­nia in T&T, ac­cord­ing to a re­port from the En­er­gy Cham­ber of Trinidad and To­ba­go last year.