Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young and all of the tech­nocrats and ad­vi­sors who con­tributed to the suc­cess­ful con­clu­sion of the ne­go­ti­a­tions for the agree­ment for a new uni­tised struc­ture for At­lantic LNG, de­serve the na­tion’s con­grat­u­la­tions, grat­i­tude and ap­pre­ci­a­tion.

This is a game-chang­ing agree­ment that fa­cil­i­tates a more eq­ui­table re­la­tion­ship be­tween whol­ly state-owned Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny of T&T (NGC) and its two share­hold­ing part­ners in At­lantic LNG, the glob­al en­er­gy gi­ants bp and Shell.

For years, lo­cal en­er­gy in­sid­ers have com­plained, in whis­pers, that the ini­tial arrange­ments that led to the es­tab­lish­ment of At­lantic LNG in Ju­ly 1995, al­lowed the for­eign multi­na­tion­als that have dom­i­nat­ed the com­pa­ny, to switch the des­ti­na­tions of LNG car­goes that orig­i­nat­ed in Point Fortin from low-priced North Amer­i­can ports, to coun­tries where LNG fetched much high­er prices.

The abil­i­ty to switch des­ti­na­tions, which was not dis­al­lowed by the At­lantic sales con­tracts, has been de­scribed as among the com­mer­cial in­no­va­tions that made At­lantic LNG such a suc­cess­ful in­vest­ment.

Thank­ful­ly, mem­bers of the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion saw in­equity where oth­ers per­ceived in­no­va­tion and de­cid­ed to work to­ward ad­dress­ing the im­bal­ance to en­sure a greater share of the rev­enues gen­er­at­ed by At­lantic.

The fact that the agree­ments that led to es­tab­lish­ment of Trains 2, 3 and 4 were due to ex­pire in the next few years, gave the Gov­ern­ment’s team the op­por­tu­ni­ty to reimag­ine the na­ture of the fi­nan­cial re­la­tion­ship be­tween and among the par­ties.

Cre­at­ing one, uni­fied cor­po­rate own­er­ship struc­ture from a liqui­fied nat­ur­al gas com­pa­ny that had three dif­fer­ent own­er­ship struc­tures - for Train 1, Trains 2 and 3 to­geth­er and Train IV—was like­ly part of the reimag­in­ing of the re­la­tion­ships, which was suc­cess­ful­ly con­clud­ed on Tues­day in Lon­don.

This was clear­ly no easy task, giv­en the five years of “ded­i­cat­ed ne­go­ti­a­tions” in­volved and sev­er­al trips to Eu­ro­pean cities by the T&T team in that pe­ri­od.

Be­fore the uni­ti­sa­tion agree­ment, NGC owned 10 per cent of Train 1 and 11.1 per cent of Train 4, but it held no own­er­ship stake in Trains 2 and 3. With Train 1 be­ing tak­en of­fline be­cause of gas cur­tail­ment is­sues, the uni­ti­sa­tion agree­ment gives NGC an own­er­ship stake in Trains 2, 3 and 4.

The greater share of the rev­enues re­sults from NGC own­ing a per­cent­age of the three op­er­at­ing LNG trains, and al­so the new bench­mark­ing arrange­ments for the sale of the com­mod­i­ty that in­volved chang­ing from low­er-priced US mar­ket to high­er-priced LNG mar­kets in Asia and Eu­rope.

“We were ex­clud­ed from those mar­kets be­cause of arrange­ments that were in place. The Gov­ern­ment’s share of gas, which we are en­ti­tled to un­der the con­tracts; in an ear­li­er time, we had al­lowed the en­er­gy com­pa­nies to mar­ket that share. This Gov­ern­ment changed that,” Dr Row­ley told a news con­fer­ence two weeks ago, adding that NGC now has the abil­i­ty to sell gas to high-priced mar­kets in Asia and Eu­rope.

The nor­mal­is­ing of the switch­ing of des­ti­na­tions is fi­nal­ly work­ing in T&T’s ben­e­fit.

While there is much to ap­plaud in the Gov­ern­ment’s ne­go­ti­at­ed achieve­ments, clear­ly, on their re­turn from Lon­don, there must be a full de­brief­ing of all of the de­tails of the agree­ment that have, up to now, re­mained se­cret.

A lack of trans­paren­cy on those de­tails will take some of the shine off this achieve­ment.