GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Se­nior Re­porter

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

Cana­di­an fer­tilis­er gi­ant Nu­trien Ltd has com­plete­ly shut down its four am­mo­nia plants and one urea plant, de­spite talks by Gov­ern­ment to re­solve their port fee dis­pute.

The move marks a sig­nif­i­cant de­vel­op­ment in T&T’s en­er­gy land­scape, with im­pli­ca­tions al­ready rip­pling across in­ter­con­nect­ed in­dus­tries.

Nu­trien’s four am­mo­nia plants have a ca­pac­i­ty of 1.79 mil­lion met­ric tonnes per an­num, ac­cord­ing to the Min­istry of En­er­gy’s web­site.

Nu­trien vice-pres­i­dent and man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Ed­mond Thomp­son is­sued a memo to staff on Wednes­day night con­firm­ing the clo­sure and ex­press­ing re­gret over the out­come of re­cent talks with Na­tion­al En­er­gy.

“We had hoped for a more pro­duc­tive out­come, how­ev­er, we have not reached an eco­nom­i­cal­ly vi­able so­lu­tion that would al­low us to restart op­er­a­tions,” he said.

While ac­knowl­edg­ing Na­tion­al En­er­gy’s agree­ment to pro­vide port ac­cess through the end of the year, Thomp­son em­pha­sised that core chal­lenges re­main.

“The mil­lions of dol­lars of retroac­tive and uni­lat­er­al­ly im­posed fees have not been re­scind­ed, and the over­all eco­nom­ic vi­a­bil­i­ty of op­er­a­tions has not been ad­dressed,” he said.

Thomp­son al­so not­ed that the de­ci­sion was not tak­en light­ly, stress­ing Nu­trien’s long­stand­ing pres­ence in T&T and the con­tri­bu­tions of its lo­cal work­force, say­ing the com­pa­ny val­ues its over 40 years of op­er­a­tions in T&T.

He al­so ad­dressed re­cent me­dia cov­er­age, say­ing some re­ports had mis­rep­re­sent­ed as­pects of the sit­u­a­tion and reaf­firmed the com­pa­ny’s com­mit­ment to trans­par­ent com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

In a sep­a­rate re­sponse to Guardian Me­dia, Nu­trien con­firmed it safe­ly shut down its ni­tro­gen op­er­a­tions.

The com­pa­ny main­tained its po­si­tion that no vi­able so­lu­tion had been reached to re­sume op­er­a­tions, cit­ing the same eco­nom­ic chal­lenges.

“These chal­lenges in­clude US$28 mil­lion in uni­lat­er­al and retroac­tive port ac­cess fees, as well as the ab­sence of a re­li­able and eco­nom­i­cal­ly sus­tain­able nat­ur­al gas sup­ply.”

De­spite the shut­down, Nu­trien said it ex­pects to re­main with­in its 2025 ni­tro­gen sales vol­ume guid­ance, sup­port­ed by re­li­able pro­duc­tion from its North Amer­i­can fa­cil­i­ties.

Mean­while, the Na­tion­al En­er­gy Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T is de­fend­ing its de­ci­sion to im­pose new port ac­cess fees on Nu­trien. In a re­lease yes­ter­day, it said Nu­trien had ben­e­fit­ed for years from out­dat­ed, be­low-mar­ket rates for port ac­cess.

The cor­po­ra­tion said its cur­rent board in­her­it­ed a trou­bling sit­u­a­tion in which users of key in­fra­struc­ture—in­clud­ing the Savonet­ta Piers and the Ports of Ga­le­o­ta and Brighton—had been pay­ing “pep­per­corn lega­cy rates” for decades.

“In the case of Nu­trien, when their 2006 PUA ex­pired on the 31 De­cem­ber 2020, they de­mand­ed a rate low­er than that which they en­joyed for the pre­vi­ous 15 years,” Na­tion­al En­er­gy ex­plained.

It said the cur­rent board took im­me­di­ate steps to im­ple­ment a fair rate for users, adding that through the “ne­glect, omis­sion and reck­less­ness of the pre­vi­ous boards and man­agers, the cit­i­zens of this coun­try were de­prived of more than 500 mil­lion dol­lars.”

Na­tion­al En­er­gy said it in­voiced Nu­trien and all oth­er users a fair rate for the use of the pier and port fa­cil­i­ties for the pe­ri­ods af­ter their re­spec­tive PUAs ex­pired.

It said that whilst some users made good faith pay­ments and ac­cept­ed the in­vi­ta­tion of Na­tion­al En­er­gy to meet and ne­go­ti­ate a mu­tu­al­ly ac­cept­able way for­ward, Nu­trien de­mand­ed that the in­voiced sum of US$28 mil­lion be with­drawn as a pre­con­di­tion to any ne­go­ti­a­tion.

In the case of Nu­trien, Na­tion­al En­er­gy said the in­crease in port and pier fees ranged from US two cents to US$2 dol­lars per met­ric ton of prod­uct, at a time when am­mo­nia prices are the high­est they have been over the last five years at ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$545 per met­ric ton.

Na­tion­al En­er­gy al­so said the pro­pos­al for new rates was met with a threat by Nu­trien to shut down its plants.

To avert this threat, Na­tion­al En­er­gy held an emer­gency meet­ing with Nu­trien yes­ter­day, in which it agreed to per­mit Nu­trien the con­tin­ued use of the port and pier fa­cil­i­ties un­til De­cem­ber 31, at the same lega­cy rates they have en­joyed for the past 19 years.

“This pro­pos­al was met with a de­mand by Nu­trien that NGC set­tle the is­sue of fu­ture gas sup­ply, to se­cure the over­all eco­nom­ic vi­a­bil­i­ty of Nu­trien, even though Nu­trien cur­rent­ly en­joys the ben­e­fit of an ex­ist­ing gas sup­ply con­tract! Nei­ther NGC nor Na­tion­al En­er­gy has a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to sub­sidise the op­er­a­tions of oth­er com­pa­nies to se­cure their eco­nom­ic vi­a­bil­i­ty,” it said.

De­spite its best ef­forts, Na­tion­al En­er­gy said Nu­trien took the de­ci­sion to shut down its op­er­a­tions, not­ing that this de­ci­sion would ad­verse­ly af­fect the lives of over 600 em­ploy­ees.

Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries Dr Roodal Mooni­lal al­so ad­dressed the shut­down in a state­ment, say­ing Nu­trien and oth­er down­stream op­er­a­tors have been in dis­cus­sions with Na­tion­al En­er­gy re­gard­ing port ac­cess and the need to up­date long­stand­ing agree­ments.

He con­firmed that dis­cus­sions with Nu­trien are on­go­ing and stressed the Gov­ern­ment’s com­mit­ment to reg­u­lar­is­ing and up­dat­ing port-re­lat­ed con­tracts.

“We are meet­ing with the var­i­ous en­ti­ties and users of the port to do what the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion failed to do,” he added.

Massy Gas af­fect­ed

One of the most im­me­di­ate down­stream ef­fects of the shut­down was felt by Massy Gas Prod­ucts (Trinidad) Ltd, which re­lies on Nu­trien for raw ma­te­ri­als used in CO2 pro­duc­tion.

In a re­lease is­sued yes­ter­day, Massy an­nounced a tem­po­rary sus­pen­sion of all CO2 (car­bon diox­ide)-re­lat­ed prod­ucts—in­clud­ing dry ice, cylin­ders, de­wars, and ISO tanks— un­til fur­ther no­tice.

Massy high­light­ed the es­sen­tial role CO2 plays across mul­ti­ple sec­tors, in­clud­ing food and bev­er­age pro­duc­tion, health­care, and in­dus­tri­al pro­cess­ing. De­spite the dis­rup­tion, the com­pa­ny as­sured cus­tomers that it is ac­tive­ly work­ing to mit­i­gate the im­pact.

“We un­der­stand the crit­i­cal role our prod­ucts play in your op­er­a­tions and want to as­sure you that Massy Gas Prod­ucts is ac­tive­ly ex­plor­ing all pos­si­ble op­tions to min­imise the dis­rup­tion to our cus­tomers,” the re­lease stat­ed.

Massy said it is in di­rect com­mu­ni­ca­tion with Nu­trien and oth­er key stake­hold­ers to gain clar­i­ty on the ex­pect­ed du­ra­tion of the shut­down and to as­sess al­ter­na­tive sup­ply so­lu­tions where fea­si­ble.

Be­yond in­dus­tri­al sup­ply chains, the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor is al­so brac­ing for im­pact. Agri­cul­tur­al So­ci­ety of T&T pres­i­dent Daryl Ram­per­sad yes­ter­day warned that the dis­rup­tion could lead to high­er prices for lo­cal pro­duce, com­pound­ing con­cerns about food se­cu­ri­ty and cost of liv­ing.

Young blames Govt mis­man­age­ment

For­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Stu­art Young yes­ter­day strong­ly crit­i­cised Gov­ern­ment’s han­dling of the en­er­gy sec­tor, warn­ing it is hav­ing neg­a­tive ef­fects on T&T’s glob­al and do­mes­tic stand­ing.

Young said the break­down in ne­go­ti­a­tions with Nu­trien had led to a loom­ing short­age of CO2, which is used in a wide range of man­u­fac­tur­ing process­es. He point­ed specif­i­cal­ly to the pro­duc­tion of car­bon­at­ed bev­er­ages—a ma­jor ex­port prod­uct.

“The mis­man­age­ment of the en­er­gy sec­tor and the Pt Lisas Es­tate is hav­ing se­ri­ous neg­a­tive ef­fects on Trinidad and To­ba­go’s glob­al and do­mes­tic stand­ing. The im­passe be­tween Na­tion­al En­er­gy and Nu­trien has not been re­solved and this is now hav­ing a knock-on ef­fect on the pro­vi­sion of CO₂ to man­u­fac­tur­ers and oth­er users in Trinidad and To­ba­go and the re­gion,’ Young said.

He al­so ex­pressed con­cern about the broad­er petro­chem­i­cal sec­tor, which in­cludes am­mo­nia, methanol, and urea pro­duc­tion, de­scrib­ing it as “very mar­gin­al” and vul­ner­a­ble to pol­i­cy mis­steps.

Ac­cord­ing to Young, glob­al en­er­gy com­pa­nies are now re­assess­ing their op­er­a­tions in T&T due to what he de­scribed as “uni­lat­er­al in­creas­es in elec­tric­i­ty rates” and “ag­gres­sive, pos­si­bly il­le­gal de­mands for retroac­tive port fees.”

He said the en­er­gy sec­tor is this coun­try’s largest for­eign ex­change earn­er and a sig­nif­i­cant em­ploy­er and stressed that in a glob­al­ly com­pet­i­tive en­vi­ron­ment, T&T must work hard to keep the for­eign in­vest­ment here.