Methanol pro­duced by Methanol Hold­ings (Trinidad) Lim­it­ed (MHTL) Com­plex in Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate will now be a part of  Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny’s methanol trad­ing port­fo­lio.

This arrange­ment is part of a part­ner­ship which has been forged be­tween the NGC and Pro­man.

Un­der the agree­ment, which took ef­fect from Jan­u­ary 1, 2022,  NGC will have ac­cess to methanol pro­duced at MHTL’s plants in Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate that will be used to bol­ster the Com­pa­ny’s com­mod­i­ty and trad­ing port­fo­lio as well as ex­pand its reach in­to in­ter­na­tion­al methanol mar­kets.

In a joint re­lease is­sued on Fri­day, the com­pa­nies said the ini­tia­tive would pro­vide “prospects for NGC with re­gard to broad­en­ing the scope of its Green Agen­da as it seeks to re­duce its car­bon foot­print in the en­er­gy trad­ing busi­ness.”

As part of the agree­ment, Pro­man will take de­liv­ery of four of its six methanol fu­elled new­build ves­sels this year. Pro­man and NGC are al­so ex­plor­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of us­ing these low emis­sion ships to trans­port the methanol car­goes. The use of methanol-fu­elled ves­sels is ex­pect­ed to trans­late to a re­duc­tion in harm­ful green­house gas emis­sions and elim­i­nate air­borne pol­lu­tants in­clud­ing par­tic­u­late mat­ter and sul­phur ox­ides. Methanol is a clean­er al­ter­na­tive to the tra­di­tion­al heavy fu­el oil on both land and sea, be­ing up to 240 times less tox­ic to ma­rine life in the event of a spill.

NGC’s Pres­i­dent Mark Lo­quan said, “This new busi­ness col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween NGC and MHTL serves to strength­en the re­la­tion­ship be­tween both par­ties by max­imis­ing the val­ue to be de­rived from Trinidad and To­ba­go’s petro­chem­i­cal ca­pac­i­ty. It al­so demon­strates NGC’s com­mit­ment to look be­yond our cur­rent busi­ness mod­el and ap­ply in­no­v­a­tive think­ing to cre­ate new op­por­tu­ni­ties for grow­ing and di­ver­si­fy­ing our in­come streams. NGC will con­tin­ue to eval­u­ate sim­i­lar val­ue-adding ac­tiv­i­ties in sus­tain­able en­er­gy-re­lat­ed busi­ness, as we build our glob­al brand of an in­te­grat­ed en­er­gy play­er, with a fo­cus on mar­ry­ing both our cur­rent busi­ness and fu­ture green busi­ness.”

Claus Cron­berg­er, Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor Pro­man Lim­it­ed, said, “Trinidad and To­ba­go is a glob­al leader in petro­chem­i­cal ex­ports not on­ly be­cause of our world-scale pro­duc­tion ca­pac­i­ty in Point Lisas, but al­so the decades of ex­pe­ri­ence our coun­try has de­vel­oped in pro­duc­ing, mar­ket­ing and ship­ping these prod­ucts. We look for­ward to strength­en­ing our col­lab­o­ra­tion with the NGC through this new part­ner­ship which utilis­es the full breadth of Pro­man’s in­te­grat­ed petro­chem­i­cal val­ue chain. We al­so wel­come NGC’s deep­en­ing in­vest­ment in its methanol busi­ness, at a time when the grow­ing de­mand for clean­er ma­rine fu­els is ex­pect­ed to dri­ve ma­jor ex­pan­sion in the glob­al methanol mar­ket over the com­ing decade. This is an ex­cit­ing time for Trinidad and To­ba­go and for the methanol in­dus­try, and we look for­ward to work­ing close­ly with NGC to cap­i­talise on these emerg­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties.”

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