RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal says ne­go­ti­a­tions are on­go­ing with Cana­di­an fer­tilis­er pro­duc­er Nu­trien Ltd., and there is op­ti­mism that urea pro­duc­tion in Trinidad and To­ba­go could re­sume by the end of the year.

Speak­ing with re­porters dur­ing a toy dis­tri­b­u­tion dri­ve at Fun­splash Wa­ter­park, where 600 chil­dren in his con­stituen­cy were treat­ed, Dr Mooni­lal said the gov­ern­ment ex­pects clar­i­ty soon on the fu­ture of lo­cal urea pro­duc­tion.

He con­firmed that dis­cus­sions with Nu­trien re­main ac­tive.

“We met a cou­ple of weeks ago with Nu­trien—the Prime Min­is­ter, my­self, and the Chair­man of NGC. We ex­pect NGC will be in dis­cus­sions with Nu­trien be­fore Christ­mas to see how best we can move for­ward. The doors are open. The op­tions are on the ta­ble,” he said.

Dr Mooni­lal al­so not­ed that ear­li­er is­sues with CO2 sup­ply, which had af­fect­ed lo­cal bot­tling plants, have since been re­solved.

“We are hop­ing that be­fore Christ­mas, we can have some move­ment for­ward as to how they in­tend to move for­ward with fu­ture in­vest­ments in the coun­try,” he added. When asked whether Nu­trien had com­mit­ted to pay­ing the mil­lions it owes the gov­ern­ment, Dr Mooni­lal de­clined to dis­close de­tails of the ne­go­ti­a­tions.

The clo­sure of Nu­trien’s plants last month has alarmed farm­ers. Agri­cul­tur­al So­ci­ety pres­i­dent Daryl Ram­per­sad warned that the ab­sence of do­mes­ti­cal­ly pro­duced urea is im­pact­ing rice and pineap­ple farm­ers na­tion­wide. Farm­ers say the in­creased cost of im­port­ed fer­tilis­er has raised pro­duc­tion ex­pens­es, re­duced yields, and dis­rupt­ed plant­i­ng sched­ules.

Rice farm­ers in Ma­yaro, San­gre Grande, and Ca­roni said they now have to buy more ex­pen­sive sub­sti­tute fer­tilis­ers, while pineap­ple farm­ers in Rio Claro and Princes Town warned their crops are at risk due to in­con­sis­tent ac­cess to urea, which is vi­tal for leaf health.

Dr Mooni­lal ex­plained that the Nu­trien plant’s clo­sure was in­flu­enced by broad­er in­ter­na­tion­al is­sues, in­clud­ing mar­ket con­di­tions, tar­iffs, and trade bar­ri­ers. He added that Nu­trien had sig­nalled op­er­a­tional dif­fi­cul­ties even be­fore the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion took of­fice.

“Ne­go­ti­a­tions are on­go­ing re­gard­ing out­stand­ing mat­ters, in­clud­ing debts and op­er­a­tional is­sues, with the goal of re­sum­ing pro­duc­tion by year-end,” he said.

Nu­trien’s Trinidad op­er­a­tions typ­i­cal­ly pro­duce around 85,000 tonnes of am­mo­nia and 55,000 tonnes of urea per month. On Oc­to­ber 23, Nu­trien shut down all four of its am­mo­nia plants and its urea plant, send­ing home 600 work­ers.

The com­pa­ny cit­ed port re­stric­tions im­posed by the Na­tion­al En­er­gy Cor­po­ra­tion and a lack of re­li­able, eco­nom­i­cal­ly priced nat­ur­al gas sup­ply, which it said had re­duced the free cash flow of its Trinidad op­er­a­tions over an ex­tend­ed pe­ri­od.