PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

For­mer En­er­gy Min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine is hop­ing for more an­swers con­cern­ing the nat­ur­al gas sup­ply to At­lantic LNG’s trains fol­low­ing the com­mem­o­ra­tive sign­ing on Tues­day for a new uni­tised struc­ture for the fa­cil­i­ty, lo­cat­ed in Point Fortin.

The deal, re­port­ed­ly will see the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) hold a ten per cent stake in a new com­mer­cial struc­ture for At­lantic LNG, which En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young said would pave the way for greater rev­enues for the state.

How­ev­er Ram­nar­ine said based on the de­tails re­leased so far, “a lot is be­ing made of some­thing, which to me, is re­al­ly no big deal.”

He ex­plained that pro­duc­tion lev­els were low­er than usu­al and were still trend­ing down­ward and this need­ed to be ad­dressed.

“The first thing is that the pro­duc­tion of LNG is 38 per cent less than it was in 2015. And that’s be­cause nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion is in pre­cip­i­tous de­cline. The oth­er thing is that we need to find a way to ques­tion when this new share­hold­er agree­ment will be ef­fec­tive,” said Ram­nar­ine, who asked how this would im­pact the cur­rent con­tracts for Trains 2, 3 and 4.

“Would it be ef­fec­tive when the Train 2 and 3 con­tracts come to an end in 2024? And would it be ful­ly ef­fec­tive when the Train 4 con­tract comes to and end in 2027? So, those are some of the ques­tions that we have to ask and I think that when you con­sid­er to that Train 1 will nev­er op­er­ate again. Train 1 is dead and buried, in terms of an op­er­a­tional point of view. You have to look at At­lantic LNG in that gen­er­al con­text,” said Ram­nar­ine.

He al­so not­ed the ab­sence of At­lantic’s CEO Ron Adams at the sign­ing and al­so ques­tioned what role the com­pa­ny would play un­der the new share­hold­er’s deal.

“How im­ple­mentable is this new share­hold­er agree­ment in terms of its im­pact on the op­er­a­tion of At­lantic? So I think there are many ques­tions that have to be asked,” he said.

He said the Gov­ern­ment would have to ad­dress the pro­duc­tion con­cerns, for the coun­try to ben­e­fit sig­nif­i­cant­ly from this agree­ment which he de­scribed as a nat­ur­al pro­gres­sion of busi­ness.

“The more press­ing is­sue for Trinidad and To­ba­go is the pro­duc­tion of nat­ur­al gas, which as I said, is not head­ed in the right di­rec­tion. It cer­tain­ly has not been for a while. And that, to me is the greater con­cern be­cause LNG plants don’t run on share­hold­ers agree­ments, and they don’t run ole talk. They run on nat­ur­al gas,” he said.