At the halfway mark of the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny’s (NGC) fi­nan­cial year last year, the com­pa­ny record­ed a loss of $228 mil­lion.

And by the end of the fi­nan­cial year, things did not get bet­ter for NGC as the com­pa­ny record­ed a loss of $2.13 bil­lion.

But for the first half of this year, NGC has record­ed a fi­nan­cial turn­around.

Ac­cord­ing to the com­pa­ny’s fi­nan­cial state­ment for the six months end­ed 30 June, 2021 NGC has record­ed a prof­it of $437 mil­lion.

This was a con­tin­u­a­tion of the af­ter-tax prof­it of $191 mil­lion record­ed for the first three months of the year.

“The NGC Group record­ed rev­enues of $9.6 bil­lion or a 63 per cent in­crease, and an unau­dit­ed af­ter-tax prof­it of $437 mil­lion or a 292 per cent in­crease for the six-month pe­ri­od end­ed June 2021,” NGC’s chair­man Con­rad Enill stat­ed.

“This was an im­prove­ment in prof­it by $665 mil­lion when com­pared with the re­stat­ed loss of $228 mil­lion and an im­prove­ment in rev­enues by $3.7 bil­lion over the $5.9 bil­lion for the same pe­ri­od last year,” he stat­ed.

Enill said the im­prove­ments in rev­enues and prof­it were at­trib­uted to “growth in con­tri­bu­tions from the ag­gre­ga­tion, up­stream, trans­porta­tion, and down­stream busi­ness seg­ments which ben­e­fit­ed from the re­bound in com­mod­i­ty prices from the end of 2020.”

Ac­cord­ing to the fi­nan­cial re­sults, NGC stat­ed its cash flows from op­er­at­ing ac­tiv­i­ties record­ed al­most a bil­lion dol­lars in prof­it for the first half of this year.

The cash flows for op­er­at­ing ac­tiv­i­ties for the six months end­ed 30 June, 2020 was a loss of $117 mil­lion.

“The group made sig­nif­i­cant progress in se­cur­ing the busi­ness with new long-term gas sales con­tracts (GSCs) ex­e­cut­ed with two mul­ti-plant down­stream cus­tomers, and res­o­lu­tion of out­stand­ing his­tor­i­cal cus­tomer claims. With re­spect to se­cur­ing sup­ply and main­tain­ing cur­rent busi­ness, in May, a GSC was signed with Trinidad Ni­tro­gen Com­pa­ny Ltd (Trin­gen), which guar­an­tees con­tin­ued op­er­a­tion of its two am­mo­nia plants on the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate,” Enill stat­ed.

In its re­cent­ly pub­lished an­nu­al re­port, the NGC stat­ed that “oner­ous con­tracts” which re­sult­ed in a pro­vi­sion for eco­nom­ic loss of $1.784 bil­lion ul­ti­mate­ly con­tributed to the com­pa­ny’s $2.1 bil­lion loss last fi­nan­cial year.

NGC’s “oner­ous con­tracts” for 2020 was cal­cu­lat­ed as $2.055 bil­lion.

While the un­wind­ing of pro­vi­sion for oner­ous con­tracts for 2020 was cal­cu­lat­ed as $270.990 mil­lion.

In the an­nu­al re­port, Enill said a re­view of con­tracts was con­duct­ed to de­ter­mine if the oblig­a­tions un­der the con­tracts ex­ceed­ed the ben­e­fits ex­pect­ed to be re­ceived and this re­sult­ed in a pro­vi­sion of $2.1 bil­lion for a con­tract that be­came ef­fec­tive in 2020.

“NGC al­so ex­e­cut­ed a con­sol­i­dat­ed gas sales con­tract with Methanol Hold­ings Trinidad Ltd (MHTL) on 30 Ju­ly, 2021 and NGC al­so signed a GSC with De No­vo for ad­di­tion­al sup­ply on that same day. On the up­stream side, BHP’s Ru­by Field, in which NGC holds a 31.5 per cent in­ter­est, com­menced oil pro­duc­tion in May 2021, six months ahead of sched­ule. Shell’s Bar­racu­da and Touch­stone’s Cas­cadu­ra projects are ex­pect­ed to en­sure the sta­bil­i­ty of gas sup­ply vol­umes,” he stat­ed.

Enill said Train 1 and the fu­ture con­fig­u­ra­tion of all trains at At­lantic LNG re­main un­der very ac­tive con­sid­er­a­tion with the gov­ern­ment and share­hold­ers, as part of the At­lantic Uni­ti­sa­tion dis­cus­sions among the par­ties.

“Strate­gies to in­form growth, tech­nol­o­gy, sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment, and the Green Agen­da have been de­vel­oped and while some ini­tia­tives have al­ready been im­ple­ment­ed, the agen­da will be in­clud­ed as part of the Group’s strate­gic fo­cus go­ing for­ward,” Enill stat­ed.

“The Group launched the new Cari­Green web­site, which sup­ports in­vestor, aca­d­e­m­ic and cit­i­zen re­search and aware­ness of trans­form­ing the en­er­gy mix with clean­er en­er­gy in the Caribbean. The Group is now po­si­tioned across the gas val­ue chain as an in­te­grat­ed en­er­gy play­er and will con­tin­ue to de­vel­op its pro­gramme of ac­tiv­i­ties to achieve sus­tain­abil­i­ty of the do­mes­tic and LNG sec­tors,” he stat­ed.

Enill said Na­tion­al En­er­gy con­tin­ues its strate­gic fo­cus on sus­tain­able en­er­gy through the im­ple­men­ta­tion of re­new­able en­er­gy and en­er­gy ef­fi­cien­cy projects such as the 100-kilo­watt so­lar PV sys­tem for the mul­ti-fu­el Preysal Ser­vice Sta­tion.

“It al­so con­tin­ued to ad­vance de­vel­op­ment of a low car­bon hy­dro­gen in­dus­try through the ini­ti­a­tion of a Hy­dro­gen Econ­o­my Study fund­ed by the IDB, as well as the sign­ing of a Na­tion­al En­er­gy/NGC MOU with Ke­nes­jay­Green, to ex­plore the fea­si­bil­i­ty of a po­ten­tial hy­dro­gen project, specif­i­cal­ly New­Gen En­er­gy and oth­er re­new­able ini­tia­tives. Na­tion­al En­er­gy al­so con­tin­ued its re­gion­al growth agen­da by pro­vid­ing tech­ni­cal ser­vices for the de­vel­op­ment of an in­dus­tri­al in­fra­struc­ture project in Guyana, as well as pur­su­ing part­ner­ships and es­tab­lish­ment of sev­er­al sus­tain­able en­er­gy and tra­di­tion­al en­er­gy-based projects in the Suri­name/Guyana basin,” Enill stat­ed.

Enill stat­ed that Phoenix Park Gas Proces­sors Ltd which cel­e­brat­ed 30 years of pro­duc­tion in June re­mains dili­gent in se­cur­ing long-term prof­itabil­i­ty, with par­tic­u­lar em­pha­sis on their growth strat­e­gy along the val­ue chain.

“NGC CNG has sig­nif­i­cant­ly pro­gressed the man­date of pro­mot­ing CNG as a tran­si­tion fu­el as we work to­wards achiev­ing the am­bi­tions of a green­er coun­try and a green­er world. NGC has in­cor­po­rat­ed, for the first time, the use of satel­lite tech­nol­o­gy to mon­i­tor in­fra­struc­ture and dis­cus­sions have be­gun with the provider on mon­i­tor­ing methane emis­sions,” he stat­ed.

Enill said while “work from home” con­tin­ued in 2021, NGC is now de­vel­op­ing the “Fu­ture of Work” be­yond 2021.

“The group is con­sid­er­ing a pos­si­ble hy­brid mod­el of work/home arrange­ments as we tran­si­tion in­to a new era. As we plan for an un­cer­tain fu­ture, and a world still af­fect­ed by the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, we are cau­tious­ly op­ti­mistic that com­mod­i­ty prices will sta­bilise and that we will con­tin­ue to ben­e­fit from this pos­i­tive de­vel­op­ment. We are work­ing at cre­at­ing a new fu­ture to­wards sus­tain­abil­i­ty, one that pro­motes val­ue op­ti­mi­sa­tion, im­ple­men­ta­tion of a green agen­da and, of course, em­ploy­ee safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty,” Enill stat­ed.