A gas sales agree­ment has been reached be­tween the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go Lim­it­ed (NGC) and Trinidad Ni­tro­gen Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (TRIN­GEN).

Pres­i­dent of Clean Am­mo­nia - Yara In­ter­na­tion­al Mag­nus Krogh Ankarstrand said the the three-year agree­ment was heart­en­ing for the in­dus­try.

“Hav­ing se­cured gas sup­plies for the next three years in Trin­gen is vi­tal for Yara. Trin­gen is an ex­treme­ly im­por­tant part of our am­mo­nia net­work and as the world’s largest am­mo­nia sup­pli­er and dis­trib­u­tor it is cru­cial for us to have pre­dictabil­i­ty in our gas sup­ply,” said Ankarstrand in his pre­sen­ta­tion dur­ing the vir­tu­al sign­ing.

He al­so not­ed im­pact of COVID-19 on the in­dus­try made such an agree­ment even more piv­otal for the in­dus­try.

TRIN­GEN is 51 per cent owned by Na­tion­al En­ter­pris­es Lim­it­ed (NEL) and and 49 per cent by Yara Caribbean (2002) Ltd, op­er­ates two (2) am­mo­nia plants and gas tur­bine pow­er gen­er­a­tion, It has been op­er­at­ing com­pa­nies in the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate for over 40 years and is cur­rent­ly the NGC’s fourth largest petro­chem­i­cal cus­tomer.

TRIN­GEN chair­man Karen Dar­basie al­so high­light­ed the im­por­tance of the agree­ment which came to be af­ter al­most two years of ne­go­ti­a­tions.

Dur­ing the course of the agree­ment, there were nu­mer­ous chal­lenged in­clud­ing the clo­sure of Yara’s small­est Am­mo­nia plant in De­cem­ber 2019.

“The sign­ing of the gas, sales agree­ment helps to mit­i­gate one key as­pect of the un­cer­tain­ty re­lat­ing to the ex­ter­nal en­vi­ron­ment that af­fects the sec­tor. As stake­hold­ers in the en­er­gy in­dus­try, it is in­cum­bent on us to en­sure that the do­mes­tic eco­nom­ic en­vi­ron­ment is con­ducive to long-term sus­tain­abil­i­ty and to cre­ate an en­vi­ron­ment which en­cour­ages in­vest­ment in­to the sec­tor, “ said Dar­basie.

But even as Yara was wel­com­ing the new gas con­tract Ankarstrand was mak­ing it clear that his com­pa­ny has no in­ten­tions of restart­ing the am­mo­nia plant that it shut down at the end of 2019.

He said it was the whol­ly owned Yara plant was the old­est, small­est and least com­pet­i­tive of his com­pa­ny’s plants and there was lit­tle point in its restart.

Ankarstrand ad­mit­ted that Yara had an in­ter­est in clean am­mo­nia and that it was ex­plor­ing those op­por­tu­ni­ties in light of the push to re­new­ables.

The event al­so marked the first ad­dress of Min­is­ter of En­er­gy Stu­art Young in his new role, dur­ing his ad­dressed he hailed the con­tri­bu­tion of the late Min­is­ter Franklin Khan for his part in the process.

“Min­is­ter Khan and my­self worked along­side those of you in the room who are in the En­er­gy In­dus­try over the past few years and I’m glad to see that his hard work and ded­i­ca­tion has come to yet an­oth­er mo­men­tous oc­ca­sion in the con­tin­u­a­tion of the En­er­gy in­dus­try in Trinidad and To­ba­go,” said Young.

The com­pa­ny has been one of the more suc­cess­ful joint ven­tures for Trinidad and To­ba­go over the past 25 years.

This agree­ment will en­sure that TRIN­GEN’s two am­mo­nia plants (TRIN­GEN I and TRIN­GEN II) re­main a part of the coun­try’s down­stream land­scape at the Point. Lisas in­dus­tri­al es­tate.