Ke­jan Haynes

Lead Ed­i­tor–News­gath­er­ing

ke­jan.haynes@guardian.co.tt

Top ex­ec­u­tives from Nu­trien met Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and oth­er mem­bers of Gov­ern­ment at the Red house yes­ter­day in do-or-die talks on the com­pa­ny’s fu­ture in T&T.

A post on the UNC Face­book page fol­low­ing the meet­ing said, “The dis­cus­sions were pro­duc­tive, and the Prime Min­is­ter reaf­firmed the Gov­ern­ment’s com­mit­ment to pro­tect­ing jobs and en­sur­ing con­tin­ued in­vest­ment in Trinidad and To­ba­go’s en­er­gy sec­tor.”

Guardian Me­dia spot­ted Nu­trien CEO Ken Seitz and se­nior vice pres­i­dent for ni­tro­gen op­er­a­tions Dean Perkins, who flew in from Cana­da to join Ed­mond Thomp­son, vice pres­i­dent and man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Nu­trien Trinidad.

A short while lat­er, NGC and Na­tion­al En­er­gy chair­man Ger­ald Ramdeen al­so ar­rived at Par­lia­ment to join the talks.

Ac­cord­ing to the UNC post, Seitz, Perkins, Thomp­son, and Nneka Men­tore, man­ag­er of gov­ern­ment and in­dus­try af­fairs, at­tend­ed the meet­ing.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands the talks fol­lowed se­ri­ous con­cerns from the high­est lev­els of Nu­trien that it had not re­ceived a Gov­ern­ment re­sponse on the state of on­go­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions. There was said to be ra­dio si­lence from the Gov­ern­ment to Nu­trien since a meet­ing took place on Oc­to­ber 30 be­tween com­pa­ny rep­re­sen­ta­tives and En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal.

On Oc­to­ber 31, Mooni­lal said there had been “no new head­way” in dis­cus­sions, adding that Nu­trien was “tak­ing steps, on a tem­po­rary shut­down.”

Nu­trien has re­mained firm that it will not pay retroac­tive port fees im­posed by Chair­man Ger­ald Ramdeen. The plant re­mains tem­porar­i­ly shut down, and yes­ter­day’s meet­ing with the Prime Min­is­ter was seen as a fi­nal en­gage­ment be­fore the com­pa­ny de­cid­ed whether to make the shut­down per­ma­nent and leave Trinidad and To­ba­go al­to­geth­er.

Af­ter the meet­ing, as Seitz walked out of the Par­lia­ment, he told Guardian Me­dia the talks were “good” and that “the meet­ing went very well.”

Mooni­lal al­so spoke, “So, we did have a very good meet­ing with Nu­trien. Dis­cussed some of the on­go­ing mat­ters, and in the com­ing days, more will be spo­ken about that. But we are, you know, in dis­cus­sions and as you can see, the Nu­trien group came to­day and had a very healthy meet­ing with us. So, we are very hap­py that, you know, the talks are on­go­ing at this stage. But it will not be prop­er of me to dis­cuss, you know, any mat­ter that was dis­cussed.”

Mooni­lal was asked why the pres­i­dent and CEO of Nu­trien were forced to fly in from Cana­da.

He said, “All I can say is the high-rank­ing of­fi­cers of the com­pa­ny, the glob­al com­pa­ny Nu­trien, were here along with oth­ers, in­clud­ing the coun­try man­ag­er, and we had a very good dis­cus­sion. We had a very good dis­cus­sion. The Prime Min­is­ter, of course, was chair­ing the meet­ing and took con­trol of the meet­ing. My­self, the Prime Min­is­ter, Mr Ramdeen, the chair­man of NGC and, of course, the Nu­trien team.”

Cana­di­an High Com­mis­sion­er Michael Ryan Callan al­so ar­rived at Par­lia­ment to meet with the Prime Min­is­ter. His vis­it was sep­a­rate from the Nu­trien ex­ec­u­tives’ meet­ing, al­though it is un­der­stood that he was ex­pect­ed to be ap­prised of the out­come. Nu­trien is a Cana­di­an-based com­pa­ny.

Nu­trien Ltd has con­firmed that its 2025 ni­tro­gen sales fore­cast as­sumes “no ad­di­tion­al sales vol­umes from our Trinidad op­er­a­tions for the re­main­der of 2025.” The dis­clo­sure was in­clud­ed in the com­pa­ny’s third-quar­ter earn­ings re­port, re­leased yes­ter­day, which al­so marked the first of­fi­cial fil­ing to ref­er­ence the Oc­to­ber 23 con­trolled shut­down of its Trinidad Ni­tro­gen fa­cil­i­ty.

The com­pa­ny said the “con­trolled shut­down,” fol­lowed a pro­longed pe­ri­od in which gas con­straints had re­duced the plant’s free cash flow con­tri­bu­tion. It said it con­tin­ues to en­gage with stake­hold­ers and is as­sess­ing “op­tions to en­hance the long-term fi­nan­cial per­for­mance” of its Trinidad op­er­a­tions.