PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

Chair­man of the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go (NGC) Ger­ald Ramdeen is promis­ing even greater re­turns in the com­ing year, as the com­pa­ny an­nounced its high­est prof­it af­ter tax in more than a decade in 2025.

NGC’s af­ter-tax prof­it for the year end­ed De­cem­ber 31, 2025 was $3.46 bil­lion, up 111 per cent from $1.64 bil­lion in 2024.

De­liv­er­ing re­marks on NGC’s au­dit­ed fi­nan­cials for 2025 at a news con­fer­ence at the Hy­att Re­gency yes­ter­day, Ramdeen gave the as­sur­ance that 2026 will be more prof­itable.

He said, “We have in­creased the prof­its of the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny by 111 per cent and 2026 will be even bet­ter. We have in­creased the re­turn on eq­ui­ty by over 100 per cent. We have in­creased the re­turn on as­sets by over 100 per cent. Any­body who tells you they laid the foun­da­tion for that, don’t wor­ry about them. That was done by hard work.”

Ramdeen re­peat­ed­ly dis­missed the po­si­tion adopt­ed by for­mer min­is­ter of en­er­gy, Stu­art Young, who has said much of NGC’s per­for­mance in the 2025 and 2026 fi­nan­cial years is the re­sult of ne­go­ti­a­tions un­der­tak­en by the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion.

But Ramdeen rub­bished Young’s claims, say­ing, “When you take all the loss­es, be­tween 2015 and 2025, in the last decade, un­der the last ad­min­is­tra­tion, the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny made ap­prox­i­mate­ly $7 bil­lion in 10 years. In five years, be­tween 2010 and 2015, the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny made $21.6 bil­lion in af­ter-tax prof­its. And in 10 years, un­der the last ad­min­is­tra­tion, they bare­ly made $7 bil­lion,” he said, point­ing to loss­es in­curred by the NGC in 2020($2.1 bil­lion) and 2023 ($1.3 bil­lion).

The 2020 loss was re­port­ed in pre­vi­ous NGC fi­nan­cial re­ports as a re­sult of pan­dem­ic de­mand crash­es and non-cash as­set im­pair­ments, while the 2023 loss was due to $1.8 bil­lion in as­set im­pair­ment charges from down­stream op­er­a­tions.

NGC’s sum­ma­ry au­dit­ed con­sol­i­dat­ed fi­nan­cials for 2025 do not ap­pear to have any im­pair­ment charges.

NGC de­clined to take any ques­tions from the jour­nal­ists at yes­ter­day’s news con­fer­ence.

Ramdeen said NGC’s loss­es in 2020 and 2023 still re­flect­ed up­on the lead­er­ship in charge at the time.

He said, “When you take all the loss­es, lead­er­ship mat­ters. Can’t get away from it. No mat­ter what you say, the for­mer min­is­ter can pa­rade as much as he wants.”

The en­er­gy com­pa­ny has at­trib­uted its stronger per­for­mance in 2025 to high­er rev­enues from its nat­ur­al gas, liq­ue­fied nat­ur­al gas (LNG) and nat­ur­al gas liq­uids (NGL) op­er­a­tions, struc­tur­al cost-con­tain­ment mea­sures and the pos­i­tive im­pact of up­dat­ed as­set val­u­a­tions.