An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

Pro­man is cut­ting head­count as the pro­longed squeeze in Trinidad’s nat­ur­al gas sup­ply hits its op­er­a­tions, with the petro­chem­i­cal pro­duc­er warn­ing staff that it does not have enough gas to run all its plants con­sis­tent­ly at full ca­pac­i­ty.

Sources say the num­ber of work­ers has not been fi­nalised as the process has just start­ed.

Pro­man chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer David Cas­sidy dis­closed the work­force re­duc­tion in a mes­sage to staff yes­ter­day, say­ing the com­pa­ny was re­view­ing its or­gan­i­sa­tion­al struc­ture and costs glob­al­ly to match cur­rent op­er­at­ing con­di­tions.

The de­vel­op­ment adds an­oth­er ma­jor pres­sure point to the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate, where methanol and am­mo­nia pro­duc­ers have faced con­strained gas sup­plies and un­cer­tain pric­ing.

In Jan­u­ary 2026, NGC an­nounced in­creas­es in the price of nat­ur­al gas sup­plied to the petro­chem­i­cal sec­tor and its light in­dus­tri­al cus­tomers.

Cas­sidy wrote that Pro­man was “re­duc­ing its head­count to es­tab­lish a man­pow­er staffing mod­el that aligns with our busi­ness needs to­day” while ex­pand­ing its shared ser­vices mod­el where ap­pro­pri­ate.

He al­so told staff that the com­pa­ny had al­ready im­ple­ment­ed work­place ef­fi­cien­cy mea­sures and tar­get­ed glob­al cost-sav­ing mea­sures.

“In Trinidad, the gas sup­ply en­vi­ron­ment re­mains con­strained and un­cer­tain,” Cas­sidy wrote. “This means we do not al­ways have suf­fi­cient vol­umes to run all plants con­sis­tent­ly at full ca­pac­i­ty.”

He said while the medi­um-term out­look for in­creased gas vol­umes was en­cour­ag­ing, Pro­man had to align its cost base and op­er­at­ing mod­el with cur­rent pro­duc­tion lev­els.

Pro­man T&T, in a news re­lease yes­ter­day, con­firmed it was re­view­ing its or­gan­i­sa­tion­al struc­ture as part of an on­go­ing glob­al ef­fort to align its cost base, staffing mod­el and op­er­at­ing mod­el with cur­rent op­er­at­ing re­al­i­ties.

“As con­sul­ta­tions are on­go­ing, it would be in­ap­pro­pri­ate to com­ment fur­ther at this stage,” the com­pa­ny said.

Pro­man al­so reaf­firmed its com­mit­ment to T&T and said em­ploy­ees af­fect­ed by the process would be treat­ed with “fair­ness, re­spect and dig­ni­ty”.

En­er­gy con­sul­tant Gre­go­ry McGuire linked the move to the wider de­te­ri­o­ra­tion of the Point Lisas in­dus­tri­al es­tate.

He told Guardian Me­dia the sit­u­a­tion rep­re­sent­ed a “slow col­lapse of Point Lisas Es­tate” dri­ven by gas avail­abil­i­ty and price.

“This is a sig­nif­i­cant thing; this is the oth­er big pro­duc­er of methanol on the es­tate that is now go­ing to cut sup­plies, and ob­vi­ous­ly that’s still with the gas price,” McGuire said.

He ques­tioned the ab­sence of pub­lic in­for­ma­tion from the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) and the Min­istry of En­er­gy on the cur­rent gas po­si­tion.

McGuire cau­tioned that the in­for­ma­tion avail­able did not es­tab­lish whether Pro­man’s prob­lem in­volved con­tract­ed vol­umes that were not be­ing sup­plied, the ab­sence of a con­tract or on­go­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions.

How­ev­er, he said the work­force re­duc­tion sug­gest­ed Pro­man had tak­en a longer-term view.

“They clear­ly have looked ahead and have con­clud­ed that the sit­u­a­tion doesn’t seem like­ly to change, and there­fore they must make moves now to pro­tect their in­vest­ments,” he said.

For­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter and en­er­gy con­sul­tant Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan said the ar­rival of new gas would have to be as­sessed against tim­ing, vol­umes and price.

“You know, while the medi­um-term out­look is en­cour­ag­ing, es­pe­cial­ly as we speak to the ad­di­tion­al gas ex­pect­ed from Man­a­tee, Man­akin-Cocuina and oth­er up­stream de­vel­op­ments, in­clud­ing the longer-term, Ca­lyp­so and the ul­tra-deep sea, deep­wa­ter acreage,” she ex­plained.

Seep­er­sad-Bachan said the crit­i­cal ques­tion was whether the new gas would ar­rive soon enough, in suf­fi­cient vol­umes and at prices that could sus­tain ex­ist­ing petro­chem­i­cal op­er­a­tions while sup­port­ing new in­dus­tri­al projects.

She al­so point­ed to NGC’s pre­vi­ous re­dis­tri­b­u­tion of gas fol­low­ing Nu­trien’s shut­down, say­ing Pro­man had been re­ceiv­ing above its con­trac­tu­al quan­ti­ties.

“Now Pro­man is say­ing it can­not con­sis­tent­ly op­er­ate all of its plants at full ca­pac­i­ty,” she said.

She said the po­si­tions were not nec­es­sar­i­ly in­com­pat­i­ble but re­in­forced the need for clar­i­ty on the coun­try’s ac­tu­al gas sup­ply po­si­tion.