Asha Javeed

Lead Ed­i­tor In­ves­ti­ga­tions

asha.javeed@guardian.co.tt

In a bid to sal­vage the Ni­Quan’s Gas to Liq­uids (GTL) plant which went of­fline in Au­gust, fi­nanciers are try­ing to change the com­pa­ny’s man­age­ment.

The Sun­day Guardian un­der­stands that fi­nanciers are try­ing to re­move founder and chief vi­sion­ary of­fi­cer Ains­ley Gill from the helm of the project giv­en the ter­mi­na­tion of the nat­ur­al gas con­tract with the Trinidad and To­ba­go Up­stream Down­stream Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (TTUDECOL) which has ren­dered the plant pur­pose­less.

Fi­nanciers told the Sun­day Guardian it was Gill’s de­ci­sion to seek an in­junc­tion against TTUDECOL for the sup­ply of nat­ur­al gas as op­posed to seek­ing out ar­bi­tra­tion which sig­nalled a break­ing point for the project.

Gill is the largest share­hold­er of the com­pa­ny.

But fi­nanciers, who have pumped hun­dreds of mil­lions in­to the project, be­lieve that Gill’s le­gal bat­tles with for­mer ex­ec­u­tives have cost the com­pa­ny from a rep­u­ta­tion­al per­spec­tive. Last week, for­mer in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor David Small, a for­mer vice pres­i­dent for Ni­Quan En­er­gy, was award­ed $20,647,017 mil­lion for breach of con­tract for monies owed to him dur­ing his em­ploy­ment and in 2021, Eber­hard Lucke, for­mer vice pres­i­dent of Process En­gi­neer­ing and Tech­nol­o­gy sued the com­pa­ny in the Har­ris Coun­ty court in Texas, for sums owed to him–US$368,793.

On Jan­u­ary 6, 2022, he won his mat­ter and was award­ed US$435,000 by the court, but to date, Ni­Quan has on­ly paid 45 per cent of the sums owed to Lucke.

As it stands, the com­pa­ny’s le­gal chal­lenges come amid fi­nan­cial prob­lems plagu­ing the com­pa­ny which has close to US$300 mil­lion in debt, and it has gone of­fline as a re­sult of no per­mis­sion to op­er­ate from the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries (MEEI) and no nat­ur­al gas con­tract in place.

A re­port done by re­gion­al rat­ing agency Cari­CRIS last March not­ed that in De­cem­ber 2022, Ni­Quan’s to­tal debt stood at US $218.7 mil­lion, a 416.6 per cent in­crease from 2018 and is pro­ject­ed to fur­ther in­crease to US $312 mil­lion as at De­cem­ber 2023.

“In our view, this has re­duced the Com­pa­ny’s fi­nan­cial flex­i­bil­i­ty and this, along­side de­layed pay­ments to TTUDECOL, has re­sult­ed in our low­er­ing of the cash flow ad­e­qua­cy and fi­nan­cial flex­i­bil­i­ty rat­ing pa­ra­me­ter of Ni­Quan En­er­gy,” it said.

Note­hold­ers have to agree

To get Gill out of the project, Ni­Quan’s note­hold­ers have to agree to such a move.

Ni­Quan was set to re­fi­nance its bonds for US$300 mil­lion (TT$2 bil­lion) by Ju­ly 31 but the ac­ci­dent at its plant on June 15, which sub­se­quent­ly re­sult­ed in the death of 35-year-old pipe fit­ter Al­lan­lane Ramkissoon, set it back.

The com­pa­ny has been un­able to re­fi­nance its fa­cil­i­ty and in­ter­est on the debt has been ac­cru­ing.

Ni­Quan owes hun­dreds of mil­lions to fi­nanciers in T&T—among them banks, cred­it unions and in­vest­ment com­pa­nies. Even the Gov­ern­ment, through Petrotrin, has pref­er­ence shares in Ni­Quan.

Ni­Quan raised mon­ey on the in­ter­na­tion­al bond mar­ket, loans and sums from lo­cal in­vestors which in­clude Re­pub­lic Bank Lim­it­ed, RBC Trust (Trinidad and To­ba­go) Lim­it­ed, Bea­con In­sur­ance Com­pa­ny, First­line Se­cu­ri­ties, Prime Cap­i­tal Lim­it­ed, JMMB Se­cu­ri­ties Lim­it­ed, Wa­ter­loo Cap­i­tal Ad­vi­sors, KCL Cap­i­tal Mar­ket Bro­kers Lim­it­ed,

In­shal­lah In­vest­ments, Farm Chem En­gi­neer­ing  Man­age­ment Lim­it­ed, GM Homes Lim­it­ed, M&J Ser­vices Lim­it­ed, Cen­tral Fi­nance Fa­cil­i­ty Co­op­er­a­tive So­ci­ety of Trinidad and To­ba­go Lim­it­ed, Petrotrin and Wash­ing­ton DC reg­is­tered, Ni­Quan En­er­gy LLC.

Ni­Quan has had five ex­ten­sions to re­pay its first bond as it met with chal­lenges try­ing to get the plant, which at one point was rel­e­gat­ed to scrap met­al, up and op­er­a­tional. Those chal­lenges were ex­ac­er­bat­ed by the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

With weeks pass­ing since the plant went of­fline the com­pa­ny’s fu­ture is un­cer­tain un­less it can raise mon­ey–to the tune of hun­dreds of mil­lions–to pay off its debts (the most ur­gent be­ing for nat­ur­al gas) and re-en­gage ei­ther TTUDECOL  or the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) for an­oth­er con­tract.

Gill did not re­spond to ques­tions sent to him.

Ni­Quan de­clined to com­ment to the Sun­day Guardian.

How­ev­er, the com­pa­ny has ap­pealed Jus­tice Kevin Ram­cha­ran’s Au­gust 21 de­ci­sion which de­nied Ni­Quan an in­junc­tion to com­pel the State to sup­ply nat­ur­al gas to the plant.

On Sep­tem­ber 22, Ni­Quan’s chair­man John An­drews, in a news­pa­per ad­ver­tise­ment, asked the Gov­ern­ment to up­hold the “sanc­ti­ty of con­tract” even though no con­tract ex­ists be­tween the com­pa­ny and the State.

The di­rec­tors of Ni­Quan En­er­gy Trinidad Ltd, as of the com­pa­ny’s 2022 an­nu­al re­turn, stamped on Au­gust 15, 2022, are An­drews, Al­i­son Lewis, Nicholas Galt, Lar­ry Fe­lix and Gill.