Nadaleen Singh

The T&T Na­tion­al Gas Ltd (TTNGL) has trad­ed $200,000,000 worth of shares in just one week af­ter the launch of its Ini­tial Pub­lic Of­fer­ing (IPO) on Oc­to­ber 19.

The IPO, which was launched at a price of $20 per share, is con­sid­ered to be the largest in T&T's his­to­ry. It was trad­ed in a new sec­tor ti­tled the En­er­gy Sec­tor on the first tier mar­ket.

De­scrib­ing yes­ter­day's of­fi­cial launch, as "mo­men­tous," Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny chair­man Ger­ry Brooks said the IPO was over­sub­scribed by 1.77 times when the shares were of­fered for sale and that there was an 25 per cent ap­pre­ci­a­tion on the of­fer price. The of­fi­cial launch was held at the stock ex­change head­quar­ters at Nicholas Tow­ers on In­de­pen­dence Square in Port-of-Spain.

Brooks said: "We firm­ly be­lieve that one of the main rea­sons for the over­sub­scrip­tion of these shares was the con­fi­dence that the pub­lic ex­pressed in TTNGL's pri­ma­ry as­set, its 39 per cent share­hold­ing in Phoenix Park Gas Proces­sors Ltd. PPG­PL was a key dri­ver in the at­trac­tive­ness of TTNGL."

The launch of TTNGL's IPO was de­layed as a re­sult of is­sues sur­round­ing the First Cit­i­zens IPO in 2013. The is­sues re­lat­ed to for­mer First Cit­i­zens chief risk of­fi­cer Has­san Philip Ra­haman sell­ing 634,588 of the 659,588 shares he pur­chased in the bank's IPO. Se­cu­ri­ties Ex­change Com­mis­sion launched a probe. The SEC's probe was one of three launched in­to the First Cit­i­zens IPO. The oth­ers were the bank's in­ter­nal au­dit and a foren­sic au­dit that Price­wa­ter­house­C­oop­ers (PWC) was com­mis­sioned to do by then Fi­nance Min­is­ter Lar­ry Howai.

Con­cern­ing the fi­nan­cial sta­bil­i­ty of the com­pa­ny, Brooks said it earned op­er­at­ing in­come of be­tween $150m and $325m for the pe­ri­od 2008 and 2014. Ad­dress­ing the is­sue of low en­er­gy prices, Brooks said: "The cur­rent low price en­vi­ron­ment, cou­pled with lean­er gas, paints an un­de­sir­able pic­ture....The re­al­i­ty is that T&T en­er­gy rev­enue in 2015 and 2016 will be chal­lenged."

But the fu­ture of NGL is bright, Brooks said, and the com­pa­ny is ex­plor­ing the op­tion of con­struct­ing a gas pro­cess­ing fa­cil­i­ty as one of its growth strate­gies. "PPG­PL is at an im­por­tant stage in as­sess­ing the fea­si­bil­i­ty of con­struct­ing a 300 MM­scf/d gas pro­cess­ing fa­cil­i­ty at Union In­dus­tri­al Es­tate to pro­vide gas pro­cess­ing ser­vices, there­by par­tic­i­pat­ing in the growth of the newest in­dus­tri­al es­tate in the coun­try."

Un­cer­tain­ties in the en­er­gy sec­tor is one of the things which the com­pa­ny would have to take in­to con­sid­er­a­tion when con­struct­ing the gas pro­cess­ing fa­cil­i­ty, Brooks said.

"Any new plant re­quires about 36 months. There would be fur­ther clar­i­ty as the com­pa­ny pro­gress­es. That plant does not de­mand a sig­nif­i­cant amount of gas. We have to look at the eco­nom­ics of it to see if this makes sense. We have to look at the in­tegri­ty around the gas sup­ply. We can't stay as we are the NGC. We have to look at how we are go­ing to change the tra­jec­to­ry of our re­sults for the ben­e­fit of the sec­tor."

He added that the com­pa­ny is look­ing at its strate­gic op­tions in the African, as well as the South Amer­i­can, mar­kets: "The pos­si­bil­i­ty of prod­uct trad­ing is al­so on the draw­ing board as it rep­re­sents a new di­rec­tion for the busi­ness and an op­por­tu­ni­ty to ex­pand our mar­ket­ing re­search with­in the re­gion as well."

"Africa is a greater pri­or­i­ty at this stage. We are not rul­ing out any­thing as we are in the ear­ly stages of our strate­gic eval­u­a­tion of our op­tions," said Brooks, the for­mer chief op­er­at­ing of­fi­cer at the ANSA McAL.

Brooks, who was ap­point­ed to chair NGC ear­li­er this month, said: "NGC is an op­por­tu­ni­ty to serve the peo­ple of T&T for me its an ho­n­our and priv­i­lege and I hope to use all of the skill, com­pe­tence, re­la­tion­ships and good­will for the peo­ple of T&T."

Com­ment­ing on the mat­ter which En­er­gy Min­is­ter Nicole Olivierre has be­fore the Equal Op­por­tu­ni­ty Com­mis­sion ac­cus­ing the com­pa­ny of racial dis­crim­i­na­tion, Brooks said the board and the ex­ec­u­tive of NGC are fo­cused on the busi­ness is­sues fac­ing NGC.