Asha Javeed

Lead Ed­i­tor In­ves­ti­ga­tions

asha.javeed@guardian.co.tt

Four plants on the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate have been shut down fol­low­ing a safe­ty in­ci­dent at an off­shore pro­duc­tion fa­cil­i­ty op­er­at­ed by Wood­side En­er­gy. The in­ci­dent has caused whol­ly state-owned Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) to be ex­tra cau­tious in how it al­lo­cates nat­ur­al gas to plants on the es­tate, in­dus­try sources said.

And nei­ther the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries (MEEI) nor the NGC can say when the is­sue will be re­solved.

Ac­cord­ing to da­ta from the Min­istry of En­er­gy, in 2022 Wood­side En­er­gy was the third largest pro­duc­er of nat­ur­al gas in T&T, with an out­put av­er­ag­ing 351 mil­lion stan­dard cu­bic feet per day (mm­scf/d). T&T pro­duced a to­tal of 2.6 bil­lion scf/d.

Wood­side’s pro­duc­tion ac­counts for 13 per cent of to­tal nat­ur­al gas pro­duced for 2022. T&T’s largest nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­er last year was bpTT fol­lowed by Shell.

Wood­side con­firmed that on Ju­ly 25 it shut in off­shore pro­duc­tion op­er­a­tions as a pre­cau­tion fol­low­ing a process safe­ty in­ci­dent. It said that all per­son­nel are safe and ac­count­ed for and it was work­ing to safe­ly re­sume op­er­a­tions.

The clo­sure af­fects the plants’ pro­duc­tion and con­se­quent­ly their earn­ings but has not af­fect­ed the op­er­a­tions of the T&T Elec­tric­i­ty Cor­po­ra­tion (T&TEC).

Op­po­si­tion MP David Lee is­sued a state­ment about mid­day yes­ter­day call­ing on the Min­istry of En­er­gy to say whether there was a cri­sis in the coun­try.

“It is dis­tress­ing and dis­turb­ing giv­en the crit­i­cal im­por­tance of the down­stream sec­tor to our na­tion­al eco­nom­ic sta­bil­i­ty that re­ports have emerged of the shut­down of Pro­man’s M2 and M3 plants as well as the Trin­gen 1 and Nu­trien 03 plants due to a lack of nat­ur­al gas sup­ply,” Lee said in a state­ment.

Nei­ther the Min­istry of En­er­gy nor the NGC iden­ti­fied Wood­side En­er­gy.

In a re­lease is­sued on the mat­ter, the min­istry said that one of the ma­jor up­stream nat­ur­al gas sup­pli­ers “had to shut in its gas pro­duc­tion as it deals with an un­planned tech­ni­cal is­sue”.

“This un­for­tu­nate and un­time­ly is­sue has led to a sig­nif­i­cant re­duc­tion in cur­rent gas sup­ply which in turn has af­fect­ed the end users of gas. This un­fore­seen event is be­ing giv­en the pri­or­i­ty ur­gent at­ten­tion that is nec­es­sary by the up­stream en­ti­ty. It is hoped that the sit­u­a­tion will be re­solved in the short­est pos­si­ble time frame,” the re­lease said.

A sub­se­quent re­lease by the NGC echoed the min­istry’s re­lease.

The NGC said it re­ceived no­tice that one of its ma­jor up­stream sup­pli­ers of nat­ur­al gas has been forced to shut in its gas pro­duc­tion due to an un­planned tech­ni­cal is­sue.

“This de­vel­op­ment has un­avoid­ably im­pact­ed the sup­ply of gas to down­stream con­sumers. While some plants were al­ready down for main­te­nance, oth­ers have had to be tak­en of­fline due to this shut-in and re­duced avail­able vol­umes,” it said.

The NGC said it will con­tin­ue to en­gage with both its sup­pli­ers and cus­tomers to min­imise the im­pact of this de­vel­op­ment.

“It is hoped that the mat­ter will be re­solved in the short­est pos­si­ble time frame,” the re­lease said.

The earn­ings from the en­er­gy sec­tor, and tax­es paid by the com­pa­nies, amount to over half of the mon­ey earned by the Gov­ern­ment and is used to fund the coun­try’s bud­get.

BOX

Ram­nar­ine: It’s a se­ri­ous prob­lem

Since 2009, plants faced cur­tail­ments as the NGC strug­gled to meet de­mand.

The dai­ly av­er­age pro­duc­tion for 2023 thus far is about 2.6 bil­lion cu­bic feet a day.

For­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine said the mat­ter was wor­ry­ing be­cause it comes at a time when the es­tate has been go­ing through cur­tail­ments.

“It is an­oth­er blow to Point Lisas. When these things hap­pen it puts a lot of stress on the plants be­cause these are process plants that take time to ramp up and they take time to be tak­en down. A lot of stress is put on the re­form­ers and then stress on the work­force in Point Lisas,” he said.

He ob­served that the min­istry has not pro­vid­ed a time frame for when the gas will be re­turned on­line.

He said that off the plants that are down–two methanol and two am­mo­nia plants–it means less prod­uct to ex­port, and the coun­try los­es for­eign ex­change and tax rev­enue.

“It al­so puts a cloud over the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate. One of the things we have to recog­nise is that these com­pa­nies have cus­tomers all over the world and those cus­tomers ex­pect their prod­ucts on time. It al­so puts a stress on those re­la­tion­ships that those com­pa­nies have with their in­ter­na­tion­al cus­tomers,” he said.

He said that T&T has been less than three bil­lion mm­scf/d go­ing on over two years.

“We have a se­ri­ous prob­lem when it comes to nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion and it has be­come acute in the last three years. We are now back to 2003. Al­most 20 years back in time,” he said.

“I am not see­ing any type of let up in this sce­nario un­til the man­a­tee field is brought in­to pro­duc­tion which is about 2027-2028. The ques­tion is what is go­ing to hap­pen to T&T in the next four years? Can Point Lisas and At­lantic LNG sur­vive the next four years?”