An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

A sharp clash has emerged over the man­age­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go NGL (TTNGL), with chair­man Ger­ald Ramdeen de­fend­ing the com­pa­ny’s re­cent de­ci­sions, while ac­cus­ing the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion of pre­sid­ing over years of val­ue de­struc­tion tied to Phoenix Park Gas Proces­sors Ltd (PPG­PL).

At a news con­fer­ence at the Hy­att Re­gency yes­ter­day, Ramdeen pushed back strong­ly against crit­i­cism from for­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Stu­art Young, re­ject­ing claims that TTNGL had drained bil­lions to sup­port Gov­ern­ment spend­ing. “Not a sin­gle cent has been drained from TTNGL. Not a sin­gle cent,” he stat­ed, de­scrib­ing the $2.2 bil­lion cap­i­tal re­duc­tion as a law­ful ac­count­ing mech­a­nism de­signed to re­store div­i­dend pay­ments.

At the core of his ar­gu­ment is the per­for­mance of Phoenix Park, of which TTNGL owns 39 per cent, as its prin­ci­pal as­set.

Ramdeen point­ed to what he de­scribed as a pat­tern of poor in­vest­ment de­ci­sions, re­veal­ing that funds meant for share­hold­ers were di­vert­ed in­to loss-mak­ing ven­tures.
“A bil­lion dol­lars that be­longed to PPG­PL and in­di­rect­ly that be­longed to the share­hold­ers of TTNGL was in­vest­ed, and the re­ward was a bil­lion-dol­lar loss,” he stat­ed, fram­ing that as a cen­tral fail­ure of the pre­vi­ous lead­er­ship.

That loss, he ar­gued, came at the di­rect ex­pense of or­di­nary in­vestors.

“Since Sep­tem­ber 2022, share­hold­ers have not re­ceived a cent in div­i­dends. Not a sin­gle cent,” he stressed, un­der­scor­ing the pro­longed in­come drought de­spite PPG­PL’s earn­ing po­ten­tial.

Ramdeen al­so high­light­ed the col­lapse in TTNGL’s share price over the last decade, link­ing it to de­clin­ing mar­ket con­fi­dence.

“Over 10 years, the share price col­lapsed by 89.5 per cent,” he not­ed. In con­trast, he point­ed to a 302 per cent in­crease in the past six months un­der the new board, ar­gu­ing that the re­bound re­flects re­newed in­vestor con­fi­dence.

The chair­man main­tained that the de­ci­sion to re­duce TTNGL’s share cap­i­tal was dri­ven by the need to ease hard­ship among the com­pa­ny’s 11,500 share­hold­ers. The move, ap­proved unan­i­mous­ly at its an­nu­al meet­ing last month, now al­lows the board to con­sid­er div­i­dend pay­ments for the first time in three years.

He fur­ther ar­gued that the same le­gal op­tion that the cur­rent board used to sup­port its de­ci­sion to re­duce TTNGL’s share cap­i­tal was avail­able since 2023 but was nev­er act­ed up­on.

“They had the ad­vice, they had the law, and they did noth­ing,” he said, crit­i­cis­ing the pre­vi­ous board for fail­ing to in­ter­vene while share­hold­er val­ue erod­ed.

Young, how­ev­er, re­ject­ed Ramdeen’s po­si­tion, warn­ing that the cur­rent strat­e­gy could un­der­mine the long-term strength of the en­er­gy sec­tor.

“Ramdeen con­tin­ues to be com­plete­ly out of his depth. What he has done is drain the valu­able US cash re­serves of the com­pa­nies and dis­trib­ute these re­serves to help the gov­ern­ment pay its bills,” Young stat­ed.

He ar­gued that the $2.2 bil­lion cap­i­tal re­duc­tion weak­ens the com­pa­ny’s fi­nan­cial base. “This is short­sight­ed and de­stroys the val­ue of these im­por­tant state com­pa­nies,” he said, adding that up­stream in­vest­ments are crit­i­cal to sus­tain­ing growth.

“Once div­i­dends are paid out, there is no abil­i­ty to gen­er­ate growth and a stronger bal­ance sheet.”
Young al­so cau­tioned that the sec­tor’s cycli­cal na­ture re­quires fi­nan­cial buffers.