Raphael John-Lall

The petro­chem­i­cal sec­tor alone con­tributed more than $18.3 bil­lion of di­rect val­ue added to the T&T econ­o­my in 2011, ac­cord­ing to Roger Pack­er, pres­i­dent of the En­er­gy Cham­ber. "This does not count the ad­di­tion­al val­ue by the links with oth­er sec­tors, such as the ser­vice con­trac­tors, con­struc­tion and oth­er ser­vice. For com­par­i­son pur­pos­es, the en­tire non-en­er­gy man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor con­tributed $6.6 bil­lion of di­rect added val­ue ad­di­tions to the econ­o­my in 2011." Pack­er said the en­er­gy sec­tor is taxed more heav­i­ly than oth­ers. "The petro­chem­i­cal sec­tor is taxed at 35 per cent of prof­its com­pared to all oth­ers sec­tors, sub­ject to cor­po­ra­tion tax at 25 per cent. The petro­chem­i­cal sec­tor ac­counts for ap­prox­i­mate­ly half of all cor­po­ra­tion tax col­lect­ed by the Gov­ern­ment."

Es­tab­lished in the 1970s, the 860-acre Pt Lisas in­dus­tri­al es­tate has out­grown its present site. Both the Min­istry of En­er­gy and the En­er­gy Cham­ber-whose mem­ber­ship com­prise key petro­chem­i­cal stake­hold­ers-agree on this. The es­tate needs to be ex­pand­ed, but there's lit­tle wig­gle room for growth at the es­tate's present lo­ca­tion, which is 32 kilo­me­tres south of Port-of-Spain. This es­tate, home to 11 methanol plants, four am­mo­nia plants, one urea plant, two large pow­er sta­tions and a large re­verse os­mo­sis wa­ter de­sali­na­tion plant. Pt Lisas, home of the Caribbean's largest steel­mak­er Arcelor Mit­tal Pt Lisas Ltd, is large­ly fu­elled by nat­ur­al gas, which is pro­duced off the east coast of Trinidad and trans­port­ed by pipeline across the is­land. Ac­cord­ing to the Web site of the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Port De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (Plipde­co), which man­ages the es­tate, Pt Lisas rep­re­sents an in­vest­ment of more than US$2 bil­lion. The es­tate is a huge rev­enue earn­er for the Trea­sury.

Last No­vem­ber, Ian Welch, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of PCS Ni­tro­gen Trinidad Ltd, warned that T&T has to move ex­pe­di­tious­ly to tweak the Pt Lisas mod­el or face clo­sure of some plants. "I am not go­ing to knock the mod­el be­cause it has been a fan­tas­tic mod­el that has served this coun­try well in the past, but times change and things are chang­ing quick­ly, so there is no doubt that there is a need to tweak it." Via e-mail on Tues­day, Pack­er out­lined how he thinks the es­tate should be ex­pand­ed. "The phys­i­cal land­hold­ing of the Point Lisas in­dus­tri­al es­tate is ba­si­cal­ly full. There is ex­ist­ing in­dus­tri­al es­tate space avail­able in the Union Es­tate in La Brea. This area should be a pri­or­i­ty for fu­ture in­dus­tri­al ex­pan­sion, if the coun­try is to ben­e­fit from the large in­vest­ments that have al­ready been sunk in in­fra­struc­ture in the area such as elec­tri­cal pow­er, land clear­ance, deep­wa­ter port fa­cil­i­ties and wa­ter." Hav­ing out­grown its present site, Pack­er said new ar­eas need to be iden­ti­fied for de­vel­op­ment. "Any new in­dus­tri­al ex­pan­sion in cen­tral Trinidad will need to be in new ar­eas out­side es­tate bound­aries. This rais­es ques­tions about land use plan­ning with­in the wider Point Lisas and Cou­va area.

"Long-term land use plan­ning needs to be un­der­tak­en to en­sure that the needs of the com­mu­ni­ty and the needs of in­dus­try are met at the same time as en­sur­ing com­pli­ance with best en­vi­ron­men­tal prac­tices. This land use plan­ning must in­volve sig­nif­i­cant stake­hold­er en­gage­ment," he added. "The land area for fu­ture in­dus­tri­al ex­pan­sion needs to be iden­ti­fied through land use plan­ning process, in­volv­ing di­a­logue with all key stake­hold­ers." The pri­vate sec­tor will in­vest in the new ex­pan­sion. "Much of the in­fra­struc­ture for in­dus­tri­al ex­pan­sion in the Point Lisas is al­ready in place. The ma­jor in­vest­ments will come from the com­pa­nies build­ing the fa­cil­i­ties, not from the Gov­ern­ment. The in­dus­try as a whole would like to see well-planned and ex­e­cut­ed in­dus­tri­al ex­pan­sion." Re­gard­ing the En­er­gy Cham­ber's role, Pack­er said: "The En­er­gy Cham­ber's main rep­re­sen­ta­tion has been around the de­vel­op­ment of the Union In­dus­tri­al Es­tate in La Brea."

Glob­al com­par­isons

Pack­er com­pared the Point Lisas in­dus­tri­al es­tate with sim­i­lar plants glob­al­ly. "The Point Lisas es­tate is a world-class petro­chem­i­cal clus­ter. Un­like many petro­chem­i­cal es­tates in de­vel­op­ing coun­tries, the vast ma­jor­i­ty of peo­ple with­in the Point Lisas Es­tate are na­tion­als of T&T. There are well-es­tab­lished train­ing in­sti­tu­tions around the es­tate which play an im­por­tant role in this re­gard, in par­tic­u­lar, the Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T (UTT) and the Na­tion­al En­er­gy Skills Cen­tre (NESC)."

The re­la­tion­ship be­tween op­er­a­tors and con­trac­tors has al­ways been strong.

"There are well-es­tab­lished and ro­bust busi­ness re­la­tion­ships be­tween the ma­jor plant op­er­a­tors on the es­tate and the ma­jor con­trac­tors, es­pe­cial­ly with re­spect to safe­ty man­age­ment sys­tems through Safe-To-Work in T&T (STOW) and ba­sic safe­ty train­ing through the Point Lisas En­er­gy As­so­ci­a­tion (PLEA) pass­port sys­tem and the En­er­gy Cham­ber's Learn­ing Cen­tre," he said. "The coun­try should be proud of the role that our pre­de­ces­sor as­so­ci­a­tion, the South En­er­gy Cham­ber, played in en­vi­sion­ing the es­tate and in­cor­po­rat­ing Plipde­co in 1966. On the gas short­age that has been af­fect­ing the es­tate over the last sev­en months, Pack­er said it must be solved by each com­pa­ny. "These are is­sues that must be ne­go­ti­at­ed be­tween the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny and the in­di­vid­ual plants over the re­new­al of their gas sup­ply con­tracts."

Com­pa­nies on the es­tate

Ac­cord­ing to the in­for­ma­tion pro­vid­ed by the En­er­gy Cham­ber, there are more than 25 com­pa­nies based on the es­tate:

• Four ni­tro­gen am­mo­nia plants

• Urea plant PCS Ni­tro­gen Trinidad Ltd

• 11 am­mo­nia plants, in­clud­ing PLNK, N2K, CNC, Yara, MHTL AUM and Trin­gen.

• five methanol plants owned by Methanol Hold­ings Trinidad Ltd (MHTL), with an an­nu­al ca­pac­i­ty of more than four mil­lion MT

• the At­las methanol plant is a joint ven­ture be­tween Methanex Cor­po­ra­tion (63.1 per cent) and bpTT (36.9 per cent).

Com­mer­cial pro­duc­tion be­gan in Ju­ly 2004. The At­las fa­cil­i­ty fea­tures one of the largest sin­gle train methanol plants in the world, with a an­nu­al pro­duc­tion ca­pac­i­ty of 1.8 MT per year. Methanex's op­er­a­tion in T&T rep­re­sents 2.7 MT of methanol per year, mak­ing this an im­por­tant pro­duc­tion cen­tre in the or­gan­i­sa­tion's net­work. Methanex Trinidad has been man­ag­ing and op­er­at­ing the two-plant fa­cil­i­ty sit­u­at­ed on the Point Lisas in­dus­tri­al es­tate in cen­tral Trinidad since May 1, 2006. The com­pa­ny ex­ports 100 per cent of its methanol pro­duc­tion, con­tribut­ing to T&T's po­si­tion as the world's lead­ing ex­porter of methanol.

The Methanex-owned Ti­tan Plant has an an­nu­al pro­duc­tion ca­pac­i­ty of 900,000 tonnes. Com­mer­cial pro­duc­tion be­gan in June 2000.

• one nat­ur­al gas liq­uids plant Phoenix Park Gas Proces­sors Ltd

• three di­rect re­duced iron (DRI) plants Arcelor Mit­tal Pt Lisas Ltd

• one DRI pant Nu-Iron Un­lim­it­ed

• two pow­er gen­er­a­tion plants Pow­er­gen and Trin­i­ty Pow­er

• lube oil blend­ing Shell

• bunker fu­el ser­vice fa­cil­i­ty Ven­trin Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny Ltd

Plant Start-up Year Tech­nol­o­gy An­nu­al Ca­pac­i­ty (MT)

Yara Trinidad Ltd 1959 Braun 285,000

Trin­gen I 1977 Flu­or 500,000

PCS 01 1981 MW Kel­logg 445,000

PCS 02 1981 MW Kel­logg 445,000

Trin­gen II 1988 Braun 495,000

PCS 03 1996 Braun 250,000

PCS 04 1998 KAAP 650,000

Point Lisas Ni­tro­gen Ltd (PLNL) 1998 KAAP 650,000

Caribbean Ni­tro­gen Com­pa­ny (CNC) 2002 KAAP 650,000

Ni­tro­gen 2000 (N2K) 2004 KAAP 650,000

AUM Am­mo­nia 2009 KAAP 650,000

KAAP: Kel­logg Ad­vanced Am­mo­nia Process

(Source: Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries' Web site)

About am­mo­nia

There are 11 am­mo­nia plants that in­clude two am­mo­nia com­plex­es on the Point Lisas in­dus­tri­al es­tate with a to­tal an­nu­al ca­pac­i­ty of 5.2 mil­lion met­ric tonnes (MT). Am­mo­nia is used in the fer­tilis­er in­dus­try, met­al treat­ing op­er­a­tions, pro­duc­tion of ni­tric acid, in waste­water treat­ment, etc. It is pro­duced by com­bin­ing ni­tro­gen from the at­mos­phere with hy­dro­gen pro­duced by steam re­form­ing of nat­ur­al gas in a one to three ra­tio. The first com­plex com­pris­es the two Trin­gen plants, which are joint ven­tures be­tween the Gov­ern­ment and the Nor­we­gian firm Norsk Hy­dro. A third am­mo­nia plant, the old­est in the coun­try, was for­mer­ly owned by WR Grace and ac­quired by Norsk Hy­dro in 1991; it was for­mal­ly named Hy­dro-Agri, but is now known as Yara Trinidad Ltd. The sec­ond fer­tilis­er com­plex is one of the world's largest am­mo­nia com­plex­es and is owned by Potash Cor­po­ra­tion of Saskatchewan (PCS) and com­pris­es four am­mo­nia plants and one urea plant. One plant is owned by Pt Lisas Ni­tro­gen Ltd-for­mer­ly Farm­land Miss­chem-with an an­nu­al ca­pac­i­ty of 650,000 MT. The tech­nol­o­gy used is the Haber process. The share­hold­ers are Ter­ra In­dus­tries and KOCH Min­er­als Ser­vices LLC, be­ing equal part­ners.

An­oth­er plant is owned by Caribbean Ni­tro­gen Com­pa­ny Ltd (CNC), with an an­nu­al ca­pac­i­ty of 650,000 MT. It is owned by a con­sor­tium com­pris­ing of sub­sidiary com­pa­nies of MAN Fer­rostaal, Pro­man and KOCH In­dus­tries and lo­cal com­pa­ny EOG Re­sources Trinidad Ltd. This con­sor­tium al­so owns an­oth­er plant, the 650,000 MT per an­num Ni­tro­gen2000 plant, which com­menced pro­duc­tion in 2004. The PCS 04, PLNL, CNC and N2000 plants use the Kel­logg ad­vanced am­mo­nia process.

The am­mo­nia plant of the am­mo­nia-urea am­mo­ni­um ni­trate-melamine (AUM) com­plex is the newest ad­di­tion to the am­mo­nia man­u­fac­tur­ing plants. Its pro­duc­tion ca­pac­i­ty is ap­prox­i­mate­ly 650,000 MT per an­num and start­ed pro­duc­tion in April 2009. The ta­ble on Page 7 shows the start-up date, tech­nol­o­gy, and an­nu­al ca­pac­i­ty for each am­mo­nia plant in Trinidad.