PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@@guardian.co.tt

Hours af­ter in­ter­na­tion­al rat­ing agency Moody’s In­vestors Ser­vice with­drew the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny’s (NGC) cred­it as­sess­ment rat­ings, the com­pa­ny said this was not due to fi­nan­cial trou­ble but be­cause it had re­aligned its ex­ter­nal cred­it rat­ing agency en­gage­ments af­ter dis­con­tin­u­ing its re­la­tion­ship with Moody’s on Feb­ru­ary 26, 2026.

NGC said, “This de­ci­sion fol­lowed a com­pre­hen­sive re­view of the com­pa­ny’s cred­it rat­ing frame­work, in­clud­ing the re­quire­ments un­der its ex­ist­ing debt covenants. While these covenants re­quire the main­te­nance of a min­i­mum of one in­ter­na­tion­al cred­it rat­ing, NGC has his­tor­i­cal­ly main­tained mul­ti­ple rat­ings, hav­ing been as­sessed since 2005 by Moody’s In­vestors Ser­vice, S&P Glob­al Rat­ings (S&P) and Cari­CRIS, and more re­cent­ly adopt­ing a two in­ter­na­tion­al agency ap­proach.”

NGC added, “This re­view eval­u­at­ed the con­tin­ued align­ment of that frame­work with NGC’s evolv­ing fi­nan­cial pro­file, op­er­at­ing per­for­mance and long-term strate­gic ob­jec­tives. The com­pa­ny does not con­sid­er the pre­vi­ous­ly as­signed sub-in­vest­ment grade rat­ing by Moody’s to be an ac­cu­rate re­flec­tion of its stand­alone cred­it pro­file.”

In De­cem­ber, Moody’s had down­grad­ed NGC’s rat­ings.

In jus­ti­fy­ing its move, NGC said, “The de­ci­sion of the com­pa­ny to re­align was with a view to achieve such a rat­ing. Oth­er in­ter­na­tion­al rat­ing agen­cies have as­sessed NGC at a high­er-lev­el grade than Moody’s. How­ev­er, Moody’s ap­pli­ca­tion of a more rigid method­olog­i­cal frame­work, par­tic­u­lar­ly with re­spect to sov­er­eign link­age, did not ad­mit of suf­fi­cient flex­i­bil­i­ty to recog­nise NGC’s unique cir­cum­stances and stand­alone cred­it strength. “

In a state­ment ear­li­er yes­ter­day, Moody’s said it had with­drawn the Ba2 cor­po­rate fam­i­ly rat­ing (CFR), ba2 base­line cred­it as­sess­ment (BCA) and Ba2 se­nior un­se­cured notes of NGC.

How­ev­er, the com­pa­ny stat­ed that pri­or to the with­draw­al, the out­look was neg­a­tive.

Moody’s said, “We have de­cid­ed to with­draw the rat­ing(s) be­cause of in­ad­e­quate in­for­ma­tion to mon­i­tor the rat­ing(s), due to the is­suer’s de­ci­sion to cease par­tic­i­pa­tion in the rat­ing process. “

Not long af­ter news of Moody’s with­draw­al of the rat­ing, for­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Stu­art Young said the sit­u­a­tion could im­pact T&T’s sov­er­eign rat­ings neg­a­tive­ly.

Young said, “To have the glob­al rat­ing agency Moody’s with­draw its rat­ings of NGC, our crown jew­el, is a very wor­ry­ing and se­ri­ous red flag. This has nev­er hap­pened be­fore. It has glob­al im­pli­ca­tions. It will al­so neg­a­tive­ly af­fect Trinidad and To­ba­go’s sov­er­eign rat­ing.”

He added, “This must al­so be seen in light of what is hap­pen­ing with Nu­trien, Methanex, Pro­man and oth­er com­pa­nies at Point Lisas, the in­creas­es in gas prices to the light man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor, which has led to in­creased prices of goods to the pop­u­la­tion, the fact that NGC is not at the ne­go­ti­at­ing ta­bles in Venezuela and the gen­er­al mis­man­age­ment of NGC.”

An­oth­er for­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter, Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan, said Moody’s with­draw­al of NGC’s rat­ings was due to the com­pa­ny’s de­ci­sion to cease par­tic­i­pa­tion rather than re­lat­ed to fur­ther re­duced rat­ings, not­ing the im­pli­ca­tions are se­ri­ous giv­en NGC’s port­fo­lio.

“The im­pli­ca­tions should not be un­der­es­ti­mat­ed. NGC oc­cu­pies a piv­otal role in Trinidad and To­ba­go’s en­er­gy in­dus­try as the sole pur­chas­er, trans­porter and dis­trib­u­tor of nat­ur­al gas to the do­mes­tic mar­ket, a ma­jor share­hold­er in At­lantic LNG, and a key par­tic­i­pant in the petro­chem­i­cal sec­tor and na­tion­al gas in­fra­struc­ture,” Seep­er­sad-Bachan said.

Oth­er en­er­gy ex­perts and econ­o­mists al­so not­ed that Moody’s rat­ings are of­ten cru­cial in the ne­go­ti­a­tion of in­ter­na­tion­al busi­ness deals. and it would im­por­tant for NGC’s cor­po­ra­tion sole, the Min­istry of Fi­nance, to clar­i­fy what it would mean for com­pa­ny’s busi­ness trans­ac­tions go­ing for­ward.

In a re­lease yes­ter­day evening,
the En­er­gy Cham­ber said, “The ac­tion of re-en­gag­ing with the in­ter­na­tion­al cred­it rat­ing process is in the best in­ter­est of main­tain­ing in­vestor con­fi­dence in Trinidad and To­ba­go’s en­er­gy sec­tor.”

Ques­tions were sent to the Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dave Tan­coo and En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal. Tan­coo did not re­spond, while Mooni­lal stat­ed he would check on the mat­ter but did not is­sue a com­ment up to press time.