The fail­ure of the whol­ly State-owned Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny to ne­go­ti­ate new nat­ur­al gas sup­ply con­tracts with com­pa­nies op­er­at­ing on the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate will be prob­lem­at­ic for those op­er­a­tors, their cred­it rat­ings and oth­er stake­hold­ers.

That was the analy­sis of for­mer min­is­ter of en­er­gy, Stu­art Young, as he com­ment­ed on the down­grade by S&P Glob­al of Con­sol­i­dat­ed En­er­gy Ltd (CEL), the petro­chem­i­cal pro­duc­er on the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate and in Oman that is owned by the Swiss com­pa­ny, Pro­man AG.

On No­vem­ber 3, glob­al rat­ing agency S&P down­grad­ed its long-term is­suer cred­it and is­sue-lev­el rat­ings on Con­sol­i­dat­ed En­er­gy Ltd (CEL), from B to ‘CCC+,’ plac­ing the com­pa­ny deep­er in­to junk-bond sta­tus.

Glob­al rat­ing agency, S&P, has down­grad­ed its long-term is­suer cred­it and is­sue-lev­el rat­ings on Con­sol­i­dat­ed En­er­gy Ltd (CEL), a com­pa­ny owned by Switzer­land-head­quar­tered Pro­man, from B to ‘CCC+,’ plac­ing the com­pa­ny deep­er in­to junk-bond sta­tus.

The rat­ing agency said a com­pa­ny or coun­try that is rat­ed CCC is “cur­rent­ly vul­ner­a­ble to non pay­ment and is de­pen­dent up­on favourable busi­ness, fi­nan­cial and eco­nom­ic con­di­tions for the oblig­or to meet its fi­nan­cial com­mit­ments on the oblig­a­tion.”

In a rat­ing re­port dat­ed No­vem­ber 3, 2025, S&P said that CEL’s short-term liq­uid­i­ty po­si­tion is strained by up­com­ing debt ma­tu­ri­ties, a sit­u­a­tion fur­ther com­pli­cat­ed by weak­er-than-ex­pect­ed op­er­at­ing cash flow.

“CEL faces a $224 mil­lion (as of June 30, 2025) 6.5 per cent se­nior un­se­cured note ma­tu­ri­ty in 2026 (with­in the next 12 months). We as­sess CEL’s liq­uid­i­ty as weak, giv­en its cur­rent cash po­si­tion, par­tial­ly drawn com­mit­ted cred­it lines and de­creased cash flow from op­er­a­tions in Trinidad and To­ba­go (T&T) and Oman,” said S&P.

The rat­ing agency said that year to date, CEL’s ad­just­ed methanol sales (ex­clud­ing Nat­ga­so­line) have de­creased by 13 per cent, pri­mar­i­ly due to pro­duc­tion in­ter­rup­tions, high­light­ing the planned and un­planned out­ages of the T&T and Oman op­er­a­tions. While in­sur­ance has cov­ered some plant dis­rup­tions in the past, re­cov­ery amounts have not ad­e­quate­ly com­pen­sat­ed for the EBIT­DA (earn­ings be­fore in­ter­est, tax­a­tion, de­pre­ci­a­tion and amor­ti­sa­tion) the com­pa­ny could have oth­er­wise gen­er­at­ed.

“Our re­vised 2025 ad­just­ed fore­cast in­di­cates that EBIT­DA will be con­strained be­cause of low­er methanol pro­duc­tion in T&T, while prices re­main at low­er lev­els. Con­se­quent­ly, we now an­tic­i­pate ad­just­ed EBIT­DA mar­gins of 18 to 22 per cent over the next 24 months, down from our pre­vi­ous es­ti­mates of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 30 per cent. Al­though as­set re­tire­ment oblig­a­tions (AROs) have de­creased sig­nif­i­cant­ly, from US$240 mil­lion to US$70 mil­lion, we now an­tic­i­pate that CEL’s ad­just­ed debt will re­main at US$2.8 bil­lion, as the re­duc­tion in AROs was off­set by the ex­clu­sion of Nat­ga­so­line’s cash bal­ance.”

Ad­dress­ing the cur­rent state of play with Pro­man and oth­er petro­chem­i­cal op­er­a­tors on the Es­tate, Young said, “Pro­man, like all oth­ers who re­ly on gas from Trinidad and To­ba­go, will be un­able to pro­vide the rat­ing agen­cies and their stake­hold­ers with any as­sur­ance of cer­tain­ty of gas sup­ply con­tracts for longer than a few months, due to the fail­ure of NGC to ne­go­ti­ate and set­tle these con­tracts and its op­er­a­tions can be af­fect­ed.”

He said 2026 will be a very try­ing and dif­fi­cult year in the en­er­gy sec­tor with sig­nif­i­cant loss of forex earn­ings if plants re­main closed due to the UNC’s (Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress) in­com­pe­tence.”

“Pro­man’s in­vest­ments in Trinidad and To­ba­go are sig­nif­i­cant and when tak­en to­geth­er it is the largest cus­tomer of gas sup­ply from NGC,” said Young.

He not­ed that all of the nat­ur­al gas sup­ply con­tracts from NGC would have ex­pired by the end of De­cem­ber 2025.

“Un­for­tu­nate­ly the cur­rent con­struct of NGC and in par­tic­u­lar its chair­man have shown an in­abil­i­ty to ne­go­ti­ate com­plex gas con­tracts and have failed to suc­cess­ful­ly ne­go­ti­ate any new long-term con­tracts with its cus­tomers in­clud­ing the Pro­man-owned plants.”

He point­ed out that the fail­ure to ne­go­ti­ate new gas sup­ply con­tracts does not au­gur well for T&T.

“To date Kam­la Per­sad Bisses­sar, and her two min­is­ters of en­er­gy have failed and re­fused to pro­vide the pop­u­la­tion with any up­date on the sta­tus of ne­go­ti­a­tions with Nu­trien whose state-of-the-art plants have now been shut down for months.

“We are los­ing valu­able forex earn­ings and un­for­tu­nate­ly our rep­u­ta­tion as a coun­try in the en­er­gy sec­tor is suf­fer­ing.

The UNC has not achieved a sin­gle new en­er­gy project since tak­ing of­fice in May 2025 and every sin­gle gas project that has come on stream and is pro­gress­ing is the work of the PNM (Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Con­gress).