Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

For­mer En­er­gy Min­is­ter and Port-o- Spain North/St Ann’s West MP Stu­art Young is ac­cus­ing the Gov­ern­ment of pre­sid­ing over the col­lapse of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s en­er­gy sec­tor amid mount­ing un­cer­tain­ty over ma­jor in­dus­tri­al op­er­a­tions and job loss­es at Pro­man.

In a Face­book video on Sat­ur­day, Young blamed the Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar ad­min­is­tra­tion and the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny’s (NGC) lead­er­ship for what he de­scribed as a fail­ure to ne­go­ti­ate crit­i­cal com­mer­cial terms, warn­ing that the con­se­quences are be­ing felt by work­ers, busi­ness­es and the wider econ­o­my.

“Kam­la’s kak­istoc­ra­cy strikes again. They are de­stroy­ing our en­er­gy sec­tor and the econ­o­my of Trinidad and To­ba­go,” Young charged.

His com­ments fol­low the in­def­i­nite shut­down of Nu­trien’s am­mo­nia op­er­a­tions at Point Lisas and re­ports that Pro­man has sent work­ers home, de­vel­op­ments that have in­ten­si­fied con­cerns about the fu­ture of the coun­try’s en­er­gy-based man­u­fac­tur­ing in­dus­try.

Young ar­gued that the clo­sure of ma­jor fa­cil­i­ties can­not be ad­dressed sim­ply by find­ing an­oth­er buy­er, point­ing to the scale of in­vest­ment, es­tab­lished mar­kets and in­ter­na­tion­al sup­ply arrange­ments re­quired to op­er­ate com­pet­i­tive­ly.

“Nu­trien is one of the largest glob­al pro­duc­ers and sup­pli­ers of am­mo­nia and ni­tro­gen in the world. That is not some­thing, it’s not a par­lour shop you could just go and take over,” he said.

He ar­gued that Nu­trien’s es­tab­lished ship­ping routes, con­tracts and cus­tomer base would be dif­fi­cult for a new op­er­a­tor to repli­cate, ques­tion­ing whether a prospec­tive buy­er could make the busi­ness vi­able if an es­tab­lished in­ter­na­tion­al play­er could not.

“They have the ship­ping routes, they have the ship­ping con­tracts, they have the cus­tomer base. So if they can’t make the eco­nom­ics work, how do you think some­body who has no ex­pe­ri­ence and none of those economies of scale can just come in and take it over?” Young asked.

The for­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter al­so point­ed to the shut­down of Methanex op­er­a­tions, con­tend­ing that un­favourable com­mer­cial arrange­ments were con­tribut­ing to the dif­fi­cul­ties fac­ing the sec­tor.

He placed par­tic­u­lar blame on NGC chair­man Ger­ald Ramdeen and the com­pa­ny’s board, ac­cus­ing them of fail­ing to ne­go­ti­ate terms that would sup­port con­tin­ued in­dus­tri­al op­er­a­tions.

“It is be­cause of the UNC’s in­com­pe­tence and in par­tic­u­lar the chair­man of NGC and the board who are un­able to ne­go­ti­ate com­mer­cial terms for the ac­qui­si­tion cost of gas by NGC as well as the sales price of gas,” Young claimed.

He said the con­se­quences ex­tend be­yond the en­er­gy com­pa­nies them­selves, with work­ers fac­ing un­cer­tain­ty over their liveli­hoods and the coun­try po­ten­tial­ly los­ing rev­enue and for­eign ex­change.

“You have hun­dreds los­ing their jobs there and al­so loss of rev­enue, loss of forex, peo­ple not know­ing how they’re go­ing to make a liv­ing,” he said.

Young de­scribed the re­port­ed job loss­es at Pro­man as an­oth­er trou­bling de­vel­op­ment, ar­gu­ing that the dif­fi­cul­ties fac­ing the sec­tor were part of a broad­er pat­tern of em­ploy­ment loss­es un­der the Gov­ern­ment.

“And then boom, this morn­ing we see a hun­dred job loss­es at Pro­man, an­oth­er glob­al en­er­gy play­er,” he said.

Young went on to ac­cuse the ad­min­is­tra­tion of pre­sid­ing over job loss­es across sev­er­al sec­tors, in­clud­ing hos­pi­tal­i­ty, small busi­ness­es, and state-linked pro­grammes and en­ti­ties. He al­so crit­i­cised the Gov­ern­ment’s ap­proach to crime-fight­ing leg­is­la­tion, ar­gu­ing that the mea­sures threat­en de­mo­c­ra­t­ic rights.

Turn­ing his at­ten­tion to the up­com­ing 2027 na­tion­al bud­get, Young cau­tioned the pub­lic against ac­cept­ing new promis­es with­out ev­i­dence that they could be de­liv­ered.

“Trinidad and To­ba­go, do not be fooled next week when they read a bud­get with more promis­es that will not ma­te­ri­al­ize, as she likes to say,” he said.