Ke­jan Haynes

Lead Ed­i­tor- News­gath­er­ing

ke­jan.haynes@guardian.co.tt

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal said the cur­rent dis­pute be­tween the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) and Nu­trien must be viewed in the con­text of what he de­scribed as fail­ures of the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion to set­tle crit­i­cal gas and pier user arrange­ments, which he said con­tributed to a “down­stream sec­tor cri­sis.”

At a post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing yes­ter­day, Mooni­lal was asked whether, in the na­tion­al in­ter­est, it was his re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to in­ter­vene to paci­fy or defuse the im­passe be­tween NGC and the Cana­di­an fer­tilis­er pro­duc­er, which has be­gun wind­ing down op­er­a­tions af­ter 45 years in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

He said the Gov­ern­ment in­tends to pro­tect na­tion­al in­ter­ests while NGC ne­go­ti­ates new com­mer­cial arrange­ments with down­stream com­pa­nies.

He said many of the chal­lenges now un­fold­ing are the re­sult of agree­ments that should have been ne­go­ti­at­ed and fi­nalised be­fore 2028 but were not.

“One of the ma­jor is­sues that has led to some of these de­vel­op­ments is the fail­ure of the for­mer regime and the of­ten vo­lu­mi­nous speak­ing for­mer Min­is­ter of En­er­gy, that over five years or so, they were not able to ne­go­ti­ate prop­er­ly gas agree­ments with sev­er­al of the down­stream en­ti­ties. That has led to a cri­sis,” Mooni­lal said.

“They were not able to ne­go­ti­ate and set­tle pier user arrange­ments and con­tracts. That has led to a con­cern. So their fail­ure, their ne­glect, their un­will­ing­ness, their in­com­pe­tence led to sev­er­al con­cerns that we face now that we are work­ing with.”

Mooni­lal said NGC con­tin­ues to ne­go­ti­ate with down­stream cus­tomers and that some pro­duc­ers ex­pressed ap­pre­ci­a­tion for the ap­proach be­ing tak­en. He added that in­vestor in­ter­est in the en­er­gy sec­tor has in­creased, and the Gov­ern­ment ex­pects sig­nif­i­cant cap­i­tal in­flows in the com­ing years.

“What I can tell you in clos­ing is that be­tween 2025 to 2028, and just in that short pe­ri­od of time, we ex­pect $9 bil­lion Unit­ed States dol­lars in­vest­ment in the econ­o­my through the en­er­gy sec­tor and that re­lates not on­ly to the up­stream but al­so to the down­stream sec­tor. So we are very op­ti­mistic,” he said.

NGC has ac­cused Nu­trien of putting prof­it first, say­ing its ex­it is not dri­ven by gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy, and claims the com­pa­ny owes US$28 mil­lion in pier fees af­ter be­ing warned its gas sup­ply and pier ac­cess would end when its con­tract ex­pired.

NGC said the dis­pute stems from lega­cy arrange­ments al­lowed to lapse un­der the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion and ar­gues it would be ir­re­spon­si­ble to com­mit to long-term con­tracts be­fore se­cur­ing up­stream sup­ply.

Nu­trien re­jects the al­le­ga­tion of un­paid fees, in­sist­ing it paid every in­voice is­sued and says the State is un­law­ful­ly try­ing to im­pose new charges retroac­tive­ly, while the shut­down has al­ready left hun­dreds of work­ers fac­ing ter­mi­na­tion, even though the com­pa­ny con­tin­ues to keep them em­ployed at a cost of US$2 mil­lion.