RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

For­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Con­rad Enill is warn­ing that more com­pa­nies could leave Trinidad and To­ba­go if the coun­try can­not guar­an­tee suf­fi­cient nat­ur­al gas sup­plies, fol­low­ing Nu­trien’s de­ci­sion to per­ma­nent­ly shut its ni­tro­gen op­er­a­tions at Point Lisas.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, Enill said the clo­sure high­light­ed the im­por­tance of both the quan­ti­ty and price of nat­ur­al gas to the com­pet­i­tive­ness of the down­stream en­er­gy sec­tor.

“If the gas is­sue has not been re­solved and com­pa­nies are un­able to tell their fi­nanciers that they can bor­row mon­ey to up­grade plant, but they will have gas sup­ply for a par­tic­u­lar pe­ri­od, then you are go­ing to find com­pa­nies look­ing for oth­er places where there’s a guar­an­tee of sup­ply,” he said.

Nu­trien an­nounced on Mon­day that it would in­def­i­nite­ly shut its Trinidad Ni­tro­gen op­er­a­tions af­ter an ex­ten­sive re­view of strate­gic al­ter­na­tives and en­gage­ment with stake­hold­ers.

The com­pa­ny said on­go­ing nat­ur­al gas con­straints and un­cer­tain­ty had made the shut­down the best op­tion to im­prove free cash flow and re­turns on in­vest­ed cap­i­tal. Nu­trien had al­ready con­trolled the shut­down of the Point Lisas fa­cil­i­ty in Oc­to­ber 2025, cit­ing re­strict­ed port ac­cess and a lack of re­li­able and eco­nom­ic gas sup­ply.

About 350 em­ploy­ees face re­trench­ment as the com­pa­ny winds down its Trinidad op­er­a­tions by the end of the year.

Enill said the im­pli­ca­tions ex­tend be­yond the work­ers di­rect­ly em­ployed by Nu­trien.

“It re­duces the amount of rev­enue the gov­ern­ment can get from that ac­tiv­i­ty,” he said, adding that the clo­sure would al­so af­fect “sup­port ser­vices and busi­ness­es that sup­plied food, se­cu­ri­ty, trans­porta­tion and oth­er ser­vices. It does dis­rupt,” he said.

Enill al­so cau­tioned against judg­ing gas prices in iso­la­tion.

He said the Gov­ern­ment had to con­sid­er the wider eco­nom­ic ben­e­fit of com­pa­nies, in­clud­ing em­ploy­ment, tax­es and eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty.

“If they are mak­ing prof­its, the coun­try ben­e­fits,” he said.

But he said multi­na­tion­al com­pa­nies would ul­ti­mate­ly con­sid­er the re­turn on their in­vest­ments and could move pro­duc­tion to ju­ris­dic­tions of­fer­ing more favourable con­di­tions. Enill said com­pa­nies need­ed cer­tain­ty be­fore com­mit­ting cap­i­tal to up­grades or new in­vest­ments.

“The is­sue re­al­ly is about how quick­ly the coun­try can sign new gas sources,” he said, while al­so en­sur­ing con­tract­ed oblig­a­tions are met and suf­fi­cient gas re­mains avail­able for oth­er in­dus­tri­al users.

Econ­o­mist Dr Ronald Ramkissoon said the clo­sure was an ad­verse de­vel­op­ment for the coun­try, par­tic­u­lar­ly be­cause Nu­trien had been op­er­at­ing in Trinidad for many years and em­ployed pro­fes­sion­als earn­ing rel­a­tive­ly high in­comes.

“The com­pa­nies down­stream of Nu­trien, the var­i­ous cul­tur­al ac­tiv­i­ties which Nu­trien sup­port­ed, those things are im­por­tant,” he said.

Ramkissoon said the coun­try would need to find re­place­ment eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty to ab­sorb dis­placed work­ers, gen­er­ate for­eign ex­change and re­place tax­es pre­vi­ous­ly con­tributed by the com­pa­ny.

Ramkissoon said the de­vel­op­ment al­so raised ques­tions about the price and avail­abil­i­ty of gas.

He said he could not de­ter­mine whether Trinidad and To­ba­go had been sell­ing gas too cheap­ly be­cause the ac­tu­al prices at which NGC sells gas to com­pa­nies are not pub­licly known to him.

“What I do know, how­ev­er, is that we need to have a gas price that is re­flec­tive of what­ev­er pol­i­cy we wish to have,” he said.

Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan, for­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter and en­er­gy in­dus­try ex­pert, said the Nu­trien clo­sure should be viewed with­in the wider chal­lenges fac­ing Point Lisas.

She not­ed that Methanex had in­def­i­nite­ly idled its At­las and Ti­tan methanol plants, while Pro­man had an­nounced re­struc­tur­ing and work­force re­duc­tions as it ad­just­ed op­er­a­tions to cur­rent gas avail­abil­i­ty.

“We are there­fore see­ing the con­se­quences of the nat­ur­al gas short­age mov­ing be­yond re­duced plant util­i­sa­tion to plant clo­sures, re­trench­ment and the po­ten­tial ero­sion of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s down­stream in­dus­tri­al base,” she said.

Seep­er­sad-Bachan said there were en­cour­ag­ing de­vel­op­ments on the gas sup­ply side, in­clud­ing Man­a­tee and Man­akin-Cocuina, as well as longer-term prospects from Ca­lyp­so and deep­wa­ter ex­plo­ration.

How­ev­er, she said the key ques­tion was whether new gas would ar­rive “soon enough.”