In a shake-up of the board of di­rec­tors of the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny Ltd (NGC), the Cab­i­net last week de­cid­ed not to re­new the con­tract of Sean Balkissoon one of on­ly two di­rec­tors who vot­ed against the ill-fat­ed NGC at­tempt to save At­lantic LNG Train 1 and Ken­neth Al­lum who raised is­sue with it but even­tu­al­ly vot­ed for the deal.

Al­lum, sources say, is al­so some­one who of­ten chal­lenged NGC pres­i­dent Mark Lo­quan at board meet­ings and it ap­pears this has not gone down well with the gov­ern­ment.

Mul­ti­ple Cab­i­net sources con­firmed to the Busi­ness Guardian that cor­po­ra­tion sole, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert, had ini­tial­ly pro­posed that the en­tire board be re­newed but ob­jec­tion was raised by En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young and fol­low­ing dis­cus­sions by a Cab­i­net sub-com­mit­tee, Young’s views held sway and out came Balkissoon and Al­lum. They have been re­placed by Dr Joseph Is­mael Khan who holds a DBA in man­age­ment and Dr Don­nie Bood­lal, an as­so­ciate pro­fes­sor in process en­gi­neer­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T.

Con­rad Enill, who has been em­broiled in con­tro­ver­sy in the midst of a law­suit from busi­ness­woman Jen­ny Shar­ma in which she makes se­ri­ous al­le­ga­tions, has re­tained his po­si­tion as chair­man of the board of di­rec­tors.

Ac­cord­ing to the NGC’s web­site Balkissoon was ap­point­ed di­rec­tor on the NGC Board on Jan­u­ary 28, 2019. He worked for over 25 years, with fo­cus on the down­stream methanol and am­mo­nia in­dus­try.

Both Balkissoon and Al­lum are high­ly qual­i­fied with ex­ten­sive ex­pe­ri­ence in the en­er­gy sec­tor.

Balkissoon holds a BSc in Chem­i­cal En­gi­neer­ing (Hons) from The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) St Au­gus­tine, and an Ex­ec­u­tive MBA (Hons) from the Arthur Lok Jack Grad­u­ate School of Busi­ness.

He be­gan his ca­reer as a process en­gi­neer at Trinidad Ce­ment Ltd, then pro­gressed through sev­er­al se­nior po­si­tions at Hy­dro Agri Trinidad (now Yara), In­dus­tri­al Plant Ser­vices Ltd and British Gas T&T.

Al­lum is a chem­i­cal en­gi­neer with 38 years ex­pe­ri­ence in the pe­tro­le­um and petro­chem­i­cal in­dus­try at all lev­els. Among the var­i­ous po­si­tions held through­out his ca­reer, he worked as a se­nior tech­nol­o­gist from 1981 to 1987, and then as an as­sis­tant to the man­ag­ing di­rec­tor from 1987 to 1990 at T&T Oil Com­pa­ny Ltd (Trin­toc)).

Al­lum al­so worked at the then Petrotrin ini­tial­ly serv­ing as the vice pres­i­dent of re­fin­ing and mar­ket­ing (2008-2009) and, there­after, as pres­i­dent (2009-2012). He was ap­point­ed as a di­rec­tor on the board of NGC in Sep­tem­ber 2015.

The re­moval of both men comes less than six months af­ter the Busi­ness Guardian (BG) broke the sto­ry that the NGC had thrown away a quar­ter bil­lion dol­lars be­hind the failed deal and was re­ly­ing on gas con­tract­ed to the down­stream petro­chem­i­cal sec­tor in its ef­fort to restart Train 1.

The BG al­so re­vealed that in mak­ing the in­vest­ment the di­rec­tors tried to pro­tect them­selves from fu­ture lit­i­ga­tion by ask­ing for an in­dem­ni­ty for their ac­tions.

Thanks to a whis­tle-blow­er the BG had ob­tained let­ters be­tween Im­bert and the Board of the NGC, cor­re­spon­dence among At­lantic LNG share­hold­ers, cor­re­spon­dence be­tween At­lantic LNG’s Pres­i­dent and NGC’s Pres­i­dent Mark Lo­quan that all paint a pic­ture of the Train 1 res­cue ef­fort be­ing dead.

The NGC and Kei­th Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion tried to keep At­lantic LNG Train 1 op­er­at­ing in the face of BPTT and Roy­al Dutch Shell, both the largest share­hold­ers of At­lantic Train 1 and the largest nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­ers, say­ing they did not have nat­ur­al gas to op­er­ate Train 1 and it should be shut down.

High­ly placed NGC sources say it was a risky strat­e­gy led by Lo­quan and the pro­ject­ed loss to the com­pa­ny was US $64.7 mil­lion or $440 mil­lion.

In a ra­dio in­ter­view Enill said, “If you look at what the con­di­tions were at that point in time, the NGC found it­self in a sit­u­a­tion where most of these down­stream com­pa­nies were not tak­ing the gas al­lo­cat­ed to them. So we had a sit­u­a­tion where we had gas, we had to pay for gas and the down­stream­ers were ba­si­cal­ly say­ing lis­ten, on the ba­sis of the cost that is avail­able to us, we pre­fer to shut our plants down, at least for some time. And in those cir­cum­stances, we had a sit­u­a­tion where the NGC faced a sig­nif­i­cant amount of loss­es.”

Enill went on fur­ther to ex­plain what the sit­u­a­tion was like in De­cem­ber 2020, “We looked at the sit­u­a­tion where we had gas, do­mes­tic gas, and yes Cur­tis is cor­rect, BP wrote us and said to us, lis­ten we have some short­ages, we think it is go­ing to be about a month or so, we un­der­stood that was nor­mal and we could deal with that. So we were work­ing on the ba­sis that we had gas, and we had no tak­ers. We had planned a Train 1 main­te­nance of which the NGC would pay some por­tion be­cause we are part own­ers in Train 1.”

He added, “At­lantic came to us and said, we need you to make a de­ci­sion be­cause by Jan­u­ary 12, 2021 if you do not com­mit to the main­te­nance on this plant, the next op­por­tu­ni­ty that you have is in No­vem­ber of 2021, be­cause im­me­di­ate­ly, as soon as your plant is main­tained, we have to do shut­downs on two and then three in the nor­mal course of things.

“We found our­selves in a sit­u­a­tion, there­fore, where, NGC took the de­ci­sion that we are go­ing to sup­port and main­te­nance of the plant al­though the oth­ers (BPTT, Shell, the Chi­nese in­vestors) de­cid­ed that they were not go­ing to so do, be­cause we un­der­stood that we had gas that was avail­able for do­mes­tic which we were ne­go­ti­at­ing, which if it had been con­vert­ed to LNG to at least give us some rev­enue. That was in De­cem­ber.”

In a let­ter dat­ed Feb­ru­ary 25 2021 and ad­dressed to Im­bert, the board of the NGC said it had in­vest­ed, with Im­bert’s agree­ment, US $24.7 mil­lion ($168M) in what it calls the ‘AL­NG Train 1 res­cue pack­age’ and want­ed per­mis­sion to spend an­oth­er US$40 mil­lion ($272M) to the end of the year.

The let­ter read, “Ref­er­ence is made to our pre­vi­ous dis­cus­sions on the AL­NG Train 1 res­cue Pack­age and your pre­vi­ous non-ob­jec­tion to the NGC Fund­ing Agree­ment with AL­NG up to the pe­ri­od March 31, 2021 where­by the sum of US $24.7 mil­lion was ad­vanced. I wish to con­firm that the board of man­age­ment of NGC met yes­ter­day and ap­proved the fur­ther fund­ing agree­ment with AL­NG for the pe­ri­od April 1, 2021 to De­cem­ber 31, 2021 in the sum of US $40 mil­lion.”

The let­ter to Im­bert added that the de­ci­sion was made “af­ter re­view of the var­i­ous risks in­clud­ing the avail­abil­i­ty of gas and cash flow and al­so au­tho­rised NGC LNG to sign-off with mem­bers of AL­NG on the Fund­ing Agree­ment res­o­lu­tion to­day.”

Aware of this and oth­er risks the NGC in the same let­ter dat­ed Feb­ru­ary 25, 2021 asked the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance to in­dem­ni­fy it, its sub­sidiary com­pa­ny NGC LNG and the di­rec­tors per­son­al­ly.

The chair­man of the board who signed to the let­ter and copied in the pres­i­dent of the NGC wrote to Im­bert and said, “We al­so pre­vi­ous­ly dis­cussed your com­mit­ment to in­dem­ni­fy the NGC com­pa­ny and di­rec­tors for any claims or loss­es stem­ming from the Train 1 res­cue pack­age ($168M). Our re­quest is to ex­tend that in­dem­ni­ty to cov­er AL­NG fund­ing for the April 1, 2021 to De­cem­ber 31, 2021. NGC is al­so re­quired to in­dem­ni­fy its sub­sidiary NGC LNG which holds the 10 per cent in­ter­est in Train 1.”

It must be re­mem­bered that both Enill and Lo­quan sat on both boards and were seek­ing to be pro­tect­ed on both counts. In ad­di­tion the late Mal­colm Jones was tak­en to court by the UNC gov­ern­ment who sought to hold him per­son­al­ly ac­count­able for de­ci­sions he made as chair­man of the board of Petrotrin and the mat­ter was on­ly dis­con­tin­ued when the PNM got back in­to pow­er. An in­dem­ni­ty would pro­tect the NGC board from such a fate.

By let­ter dat­ed Feb­ru­ary 8, 2021, two weeks be­fore the Feb­ru­ary 25, 2021 let­ter re­ferred to ear­li­er, the NGC sent a copy to Im­bert of the in­dem­ni­ty doc­u­ment “with the re­quired wa­ter­marks” for the board and com­pa­ny not to be held li­able should the first US24.7 mil­lion be lost while the sec­ond let­ter was to in­dem­ni­fy for the US $40 mil­lion there­fore en­sur­ing they could not be made to pay from their pock­ets if the deal failed and the en­tire $440 mil­lion was lost.

The prime min­is­ter has since come clos­est to ad­mit­ting that Train 1 is dead and the mon­ey lost by say­ing it was on life sup­port.