Na­tion­al En­er­gy Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go Lim­it­ed has re­cov­ered US$484,000 of a US$779,619.69 debt owed by Well Ser­vices Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny for its use of berth three and as­so­ci­at­ed ma­rine fa­cil­i­ties at the Port of Brighton, La Brea.

In a news re­lease yes­ter­day, Na­tion­al En­er­gy dis­closed that the out­stand­ing rental pay­ments dat­ed back to 2022 and that a con­sent or­der had been se­cured through High Court pro­ceed­ings, re­quir­ing Well Ser­vices to pay the full out­stand­ing sum, to­geth­er with in­ter­est and Na­tion­al En­er­gy’s le­gal costs.

The state en­ter­prise’s cur­rent board, which took of­fice in Ju­ly 2025, moved to re­cov­er the debt af­ter iden­ti­fy­ing long­stand­ing prob­lems with the col­lec­tion of rental in­come and the en­force­ment of pay­ment agree­ments.

Na­tion­al En­er­gy re­port­ed that rental agree­ments had not been es­ca­lat­ed, over­due rents had gone un­col­lect­ed and some debts had be­come statute-barred, lim­it­ing the com­pa­ny’s abil­i­ty to re­cov­er the mon­ey owed.

In oth­er cas­es, agree­ments to set­tle out­stand­ing rental charges through pe­ri­od­ic pay­ments were not en­forced.

The cor­po­ra­tion iden­ti­fied the Well Ser­vices debt as be­ing at risk of be­com­ing statute-barred, which could have re­sult­ed in the loss of US$779,619.69 had ac­tion not been tak­en to re­cov­er it.

Na­tion­al En­er­gy dis­closed that Well Ser­vices had pre­vi­ous­ly ac­knowl­edged the debt in writ­ing and agreed to make pe­ri­od­ic pay­ments.

How­ev­er, the com­pa­ny main­tained that the pre­vi­ous board and man­age­ment took no steps to col­lect the out­stand­ing rental charges.

Af­ter Na­tion­al En­er­gy ini­ti­at­ed High Court pro­ceed­ings, Well Ser­vices en­tered in­to ne­go­ti­a­tions with the state en­ter­prise to set­tle the claim. Those dis­cus­sions re­sult­ed in a con­sent or­der re­quir­ing pay­ment of the out­stand­ing amount, in­ter­est and costs.

Na­tion­al En­er­gy chair­man Ger­ald Ramdeen de­scribed the re­cov­ery ef­fort as ev­i­dence of a change in the cor­po­ra­tion’s ap­proach to man­ag­ing pub­lic as­sets and col­lect­ing rev­enue owed to the state.

“The pur­suit of this debt and the suc­cess of Na­tion­al En­er­gy demon­strate the dif­fer­ence be­tween the ap­proach tak­en by the present board and that of the pre­vi­ous board in the con­duct of the peo­ple’s busi­ness,” Ramdeen said.

He main­tained that Na­tion­al En­er­gy has a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to pro­tect the as­sets and re­sources en­trust­ed to it and to take ap­pro­pri­ate ac­tion to re­cov­er le­git­i­mate­ly owed sums.

Ramdeen al­so crit­i­cised the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion of the com­pa­ny, de­clar­ing that the ap­proach to man­ag­ing its af­fairs be­fore April 2025 had come to an end.

“The com­fort that was en­joyed by those who used State as­sets with­out cost be­fore April 2025 and suf­fered no sanc­tion is now non-ex­is­tent,” he said.

“Those who refuse to pay for the use of State as­sets must now ful­fil their fi­nan­cial oblig­a­tions or suf­fer the sanc­tions im­posed un­der their con­tracts or by law.”

Na­tion­al En­er­gy’s re­cov­ery of the debt forms part of its wider ef­fort to ad­dress out­stand­ing re­ceiv­ables and en­force pay­ment oblig­a­tions as­so­ci­at­ed with the use of its fa­cil­i­ties.

The cor­po­ra­tion’s re­lease did not spec­i­fy the pay­ment sched­ule for the re­main­ing bal­ance or the amount of in­ter­est and le­gal costs re­cov­ered to date.