Should the PNM form the next gov­ern­ment it will not sac­ri­fice old­er petro­chem­i­cal plants in favour of new plants as it grap­ples with the con­tin­ued short­age of nat­ur­al gas. This was the as­sur­ance giv­en to the down­stream in­dus­try by Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley who told a lun­cheon host­ed by the En­er­gy Cham­ber last week that the PNM re­ject­ed such a pol­i­cy.

Dr Row­ley said there have been in­di­ca­tors com­ing from the Per­sad-Bisses­sar ad­min­is­tra­tion that one of the ways to deal with the nat­ur­al gas cur­tail­ment was to en­sure that the gas went to the most ef­fi­cient plants which meant that the old­er plants would have to make way for more mod­ern petro­chem­i­cal plants.

The Op­po­si­tion Leader's ar­gu­ment was that such an ap­proach would lead to a loss of in­vestor con­fi­dence and would come at a time when the gov­ern­ment has al­ready led the coun­try in­to ar­bi­tra­tion with in­vestors who had com­mit­ted to build­ing an alu­mini­um in­dus­try.

He said the chal­lenge of gas cur­tail­ment can­not be wished away and es­ti­mat­ed that the coun­try had al­ready lost $10 bil­lion in rev­enues and the pri­vate sec­tor has al­so been hurt­ing.

The Op­po­si­tion Leader de­scribed it as an im­pend­ing cri­sis which has im­pugned the rep­u­ta­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go as a re­li­able gas sup­pli­er and ac­tion had to be tak­en to get the ad­di­tion­al gas brought on­shore.

His mes­sage was wel­comed by the down­stream­ers with the pres­i­dent of the Pont Lisas Ex­ec­u­tives As­so­ci­a­tion, Ian Welch, say­ing the is­sue was a ma­jor one for the sec­tor.

He said, "Dr Row­ley dealt with the is­sue head on. It's one that is of sig­nif­i­cant im­por­tance for our sec­tor and we are grat­i­fied and pleased to see that its re­ceiv­ing at­ten­tion and recog­ni­tion and will be on the front­burn­er of the na­tion's agen­da."

Welch con­firmed that there are times that the gas short­age has been as high as 25 per cent.

In an in­ter­view with BG, Welch said, "We have a cur­tail­ment of up­wards of 10 per cent. De­pend­ing on the kind of ac­tiv­i­ty on­shore and off­shore, it can fluc­tu­ate in that kind of range so it is an ac­cu­rate re­flec­tion of what the sit­u­a­tion is."

He al­so dis­missed the sug­ges­tion that the old­er plants were a drain on the sys­tem and that they were in­ef­fi­cient.

"In our type of busi­ness we con­tin­u­al­ly rein­vest, for ex­am­ple, in our fa­cil­i­ties. Now we have a very sig­nif­i­cant in­vest­ment go­ing on as we speak, so if you ask me to­day, what is the age of our fa­cil­i­ty or what is the life ex­pectan­cy I would tell you in­def­i­nite and that is be­cause of the con­tin­u­ous rein­vest­ment.

"The rhetoric be­tween old­er and new­er plants, yes there may be dif­fer­ences in tech­nol­o­gy but I can tell you we al­ways spend mon­ey to up­grade and keep ahead. You have to oth­er­wise you will fall by the way­side be­cause you have be­come an un­safe op­er­a­tion," Welch told BG.

Welch ac­knowl­edged that shale gas con­tin­ues to im­pact the glob­al petro­chem­i­cals in­dus­try but said he was not wor­ried about shale.

"There is lots of in­vest­ments in the Unit­ed States, lots of com­pe­ti­tion, but we try not to wor­ry about com­pe­ti­tion. We try to do what we do to the best of our abil­i­ty so, no mat­ter what the com­pe­ti­tion, we are able to do well. So our thrust is to en­sure that our plants re­main com­pet­i­tive and once we are com­pet­i­tive we are sure we can re­main rel­e­vant."

On the is­sue of low petro­chem­i­cal prices, Welch said it is the na­ture of the en­er­gy sec­tor and he was con­cerned that the coun­try was not hav­ing the right con­ver­sa­tion as it re­lates to en­er­gy prices.

"We live in a cycli­cal busi­ness. We are in a down cy­cle now and, in my ca­reer, I have seen sev­er­al and we can ride out of it with the right fo­cus and man­age­ment."

Welch added: "Every­body asks me about when do I see oil com­ing back up, and the con­ver­sa­tion is when its com­ing back up and where it is go­ing to get to.

"That should not be the con­ver­sa­tion. The con­ver­sa­tion should be what are we do­ing about it to sur­vive in the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion."