Amid mount­ing ques­tions about op­er­a­tions at var­i­ous Point Lisas fa­cil­i­ties, Methanol Hold­ings (Trinidad) Ltd has signed a new nat­ur­al gas sup­ply con­tract with the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

In a re­lease yes­ter­day, NGC dis­closed it signed the con­tract with MHTL at the com­pa­ny’s head of­fice in Point Lisas.

The state­ment by the NGC said, “The Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go Lim­it­ed (NGC) has tak­en an­oth­er sig­nif­i­cant step in ad­vanc­ing its down­stream gas con­tract­ing agen­da with the for­mal­i­sa­tion of a new gas sales con­tract (GSC) with Methanol Hold­ings (Trinidad) Lim­it­ed (MHTL). MHTL is the largest methanol pro­duc­er on the Point Lisas Es­tate. The ex­e­cu­tion of this con­tract ev­i­dences re­newed con­fi­dence of the petro­chem­i­cal pro­duc­ers and MHTL in par­tic­u­lar, in the man­age­ment of the down­stream petro­chem­i­cal sec­tor by NGC.”

NGC said the agree­ment re­in­forces NGC’s con­tin­ued com­mit­ment to sup­port­ing the long-term sus­tain­abil­i­ty and com­pet­i­tive­ness of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s petro­chem­i­cal sec­tor.

MHTL is owned by the Swiss com­pa­ny, Pro­man.

The re­lease out­lined, “The ex­e­cu­tion of the methanol GSC comes short­ly af­ter the ex­e­cu­tion of new GSC’s for Pro­man’s am­mo­nia plants, Caribbean Ni­tro­gen Com­pa­ny (CNC) and Ni­tro­gen (2000) Un­lim­it­ed (N2000). Un­der the agree­ment, NGC will sup­ply nat­ur­al gas to sup­port MHTL’s methanol op­er­a­tions at the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate. The GSC re­flects NGC’s strate­gic fo­cus on strength­en­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion with down­stream cus­tomers and sup­port­ing an in­dus­try that re­mains a ma­jor con­trib­u­tor to na­tion­al eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment, for­eign ex­change earn­ings and em­ploy­ment.”

The state­ment said the ex­e­cu­tion of the MHTL agree­ment marked the suc­cess­ful con­clu­sion of 100 per cent of NGC’s down­stream gas con­tract re­newals with its down­stream cus­tomers and the Pro­man Group com­pa­nies, in­clud­ing MHTL, CNC and N2000.

NGC said, “The com­ple­tion of these agree­ments un­der­scores the con­fi­dence of key down­stream stake­hold­ers in Trinidad and To­ba­go’s en­er­gy sec­tor and demon­strates NGC’s con­tin­ued abil­i­ty to work col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly with its cus­tomers to se­cure com­mer­cial­ly sus­tain­able out­comes that sup­port in­dus­tri­al con­ti­nu­ity and long-term na­tion­al val­ue cre­ation.”

NGC, which has a vir­tu­al mo­nop­oly in sup­ply­ing nat­ur­al gas to down­stream petro­chem­i­cal and light in­dus­tri­al cus­tomers, does not dis­close the length of its gas sup­ply con­tracts to the petro­chem­i­cal sec­tor.