An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) chair­man Ger­ald Ramdeen says the state com­pa­ny has re­in­forced its po­si­tion in an in­creas­ing­ly com­pet­i­tive nat­ur­al gas mar­ket af­ter sign­ing a new sup­ply con­tract with EOG Re­sources Trinidad Ltd on Fri­day at the Hy­att Re­gency, Port of SpaiThe agree­ment, con­clud­ed eight months ahead of sched­ule, re­news an ex­ist­ing arrange­ment due to ex­pire on De­cem­ber 31 and se­cures gas sup­ply for the next two years.

Ramdeen said the ear­ly com­ple­tion re­flects ef­fi­cien­cy and the strength of the long­stand­ing re­la­tion­ship be­tween NGC and EOG, while en­sur­ing con­ti­nu­ity of sup­ply to key down­stream sec­tors.

He said the con­tract car­ries added sig­nif­i­cance fol­low­ing the re­struc­tur­ing of At­lantic LNG, which fun­da­men­tal­ly changed NGC’s role as the sole ag­gre­ga­tor of gas in the mid­stream.

“Pri­or to the re­struc­tur­ing of At­lantic LNG, the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny was the sole ag­gre­ga­tor of gas in the mid­stream,” Ramdeen said, ex­plain­ing that sub­se­quent pol­i­cy changes al­lowed up­stream pro­duc­ers to mar­ket gas di­rect­ly to At­lantic share­hold­ers, in­creas­ing com­pe­ti­tion for sup­ply.

He said NGC must now com­pete with mul­ti­ple buy­ers for up­stream gas, mak­ing the suc­cess­ful con­clu­sion of agree­ments such as the EOG con­tract a demon­stra­tion of its ne­go­ti­at­ing strength.

“It proves the strength of the NGC and its abil­i­ty to ne­go­ti­ate terms in re­la­tion to sup­ply and vol­ume and price that is more com­pet­i­tive than any­one else,” he said.

Ramdeen not­ed that all nat­ur­al gas un­der the agree­ment is pro­duced with­in Trinidad and To­ba­go’s ju­ris­dic­tion, and re­it­er­at­ed that NGC’s man­date is to se­cure sup­ply for pow­er gen­er­a­tion, petro­chem­i­cals, LNG oblig­a­tions, and large in­dus­tri­al cus­tomers.

Ad­dress­ing re­ports of plant shut­downs at the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate, he said nat­ur­al gas al­lo­ca­tion is dri­ven by val­ue op­ti­mi­sa­tion rather than keep­ing all plants op­er­a­tional. He said lim­it­ed sup­ply re­quires pri­ori­ti­sa­tion to en­sure the high­est re­turns to the coun­try.
“The first pri­or­i­ty is to en­sure that the quan­ti­ty of gas that is avail­able from the NGC brings the high­est mar­gins to the peo­ple of this coun­try and that al­lo­ca­tion de­ci­sions must bal­ance do­mes­tic de­mand with LNG ex­port op­por­tu­ni­ties,” Ramdeen ex­plained.

For­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Stu­art Young sharply crit­i­cised the ap­proach, ac­cus­ing the cur­rent lead­er­ship of mis­man­ag­ing the sec­tor.

“The chair­man of NGC be­lieves that he can run the NGC group with false­hoods, spins, and con­tor­tion of the truth. The fact is that in the short few months that he has been chair­man, there have been record shut­downs of plants at the Pt Lisas es­tate as he and Mooti­lal Ram­per­sad have changed Trinidad and To­ba­go’s gas al­lo­ca­tion pol­i­cy, lead­ing to the de­struc­tion of the petchem sec­tor,” Young said.

He added that nat­ur­al gas is be­ing di­vert­ed to At­lantic LNG to take ad­van­tage of high­er glob­al prices, ar­gu­ing that this shift is un­der­min­ing the do­mes­tic in­dus­try while ben­e­fit­ting from re­struc­tur­ing gains achieved un­der the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion.