For­mer min­is­ter of en­er­gy and en­er­gy in­dus­tries Stu­art Young has de­fend­ed the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s (PNM) man­age­ment of the do­mes­tic en­er­gy sec­tor, as­sert­ing that the cur­rent surge in state rev­enues is the di­rect re­sult of a land­mark re­struc­tur­ing of At­lantic LNG ex­e­cut­ed dur­ing his tenure.

In a Face­book post on Thurs­day, Young ad­dressed the on­go­ing de­bate over the coun­try’s eco­nom­ic per­for­mance, de­clar­ing that the com­plex, five-year LNG ne­go­ti­a­tions with glob­al en­er­gy ma­jors BP and Shell—for­mal­ly com­plet­ed in De­cem­ber 2023—re­main the pri­ma­ry cat­a­lyst be­hind the high­er earn­ings cur­rent­ly be­ing record­ed by the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) and the cen­tral gov­ern­ment.

“The re­struc­tur­ing of At­lantic LNG was the vi­sion and pol­i­cy of the PNM in 2018 and we set about a dif­fi­cult and com­plex task of ne­go­ti­at­ing with bp and Shell for five years un­til its com­ple­tion in De­cem­ber 2023.

“What we achieved with the re­struc­tur­ing of AL­NG was un­prece­dent­ed glob­al­ly. It had nev­er been done any­where else in the world up to that point in time.

“These re­ports from De­cem­ber 2023 record ex­act­ly what we said the ben­e­fits to T&T would be back in 2023—high­er rev­enue for NGC and Trinidad and To­ba­go via high­er gas prices, a new 10 per cent share­hold­ing across the whole of AL­NG (where TT on­ly had share­hold­ing in Trains 1 and 4 be­fore) and im­por­tant­ly via NGC get­ting an in­creased num­ber of LNG car­gos to sell,” Young ex­plained.

To­day, he added in 2026, “ex­act­ly as we in­tend­ed and fought hard to achieve,” T&T is ben­e­fit­ing, es­pe­cial­ly via NGC, from in­creased rev­enues as a di­rect re­sult of the work that we did and com­plet­ed in De­cem­ber 2023.

In his state­ment, Young cau­tioned the pub­lic against ac­cept­ing claims from cur­rent gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials who at­tribute im­proved en­er­gy sec­tor re­ceipts to their own re­cent poli­cies.

“Do not be fooled by those who are in of­fice now try­ing to mis­lead you and claim that in­creased rev­enues by NGC and the State from the en­er­gy sec­tor are due to their poli­cies or de­ci­sions. In fact, their ac­tions are de­stroy­ing the en­er­gy sec­tor as you have seen with the de­par­ture of Nu­trien and Methanex,” he said.

Young added the pric­ing arrange­ments ne­go­ti­at­ed be­tween 2019 and 2023 linked gas prices to Asian and Eu­ro­pean gas mar­kets as well as Brent crude oil prices, al­low­ing T&T to cap­ture greater val­ue from its nat­ur­al gas re­sources.

“The gas prices we ne­go­ti­at­ed from 2019 and in AL­NG are why NGC and TT are earn­ing high­er rev­enues to­day, as we pegged our gas prices on Asian gas prices, Eu­ro­pean gas prices and Brent Oil prices. The Asian and Eu­ro­pean gas prices have been ten times high­er than the gas price we would have got­ten if we did not ne­go­ti­ate these new prices. So that is what is re­spon­si­ble for NGC and TT’s high­er rev­enues, not the in­com­pe­tence of those who are cur­rent­ly in charge,” he stat­ed.

Young al­so crit­i­cised what he de­scribed as a de­cline in NGC’s sup­port for na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment ini­tia­tives, ques­tion­ing why spon­sor­ship for track and field, steel­band and oth­er com­mu­ni­ty pro­grammes has been dis­con­tin­ued.