The Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) of T&T an­nounced yes­ter­day that it had com­plet­ed ne­go­ti­a­tions with the Swiss com­pa­ny Pro­man for the ex­e­cu­tion of a gas sales con­tract for Methanol Hold­ings (Trinidad) Ltd (MHTL).

The gas sales con­tract was signed at NGC’s head of­fice in Point Lisas on Oc­to­ber 20th, 2023 by NGC Pres­i­dent Mark Lo­quan and Jerome Dook­ie, Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor of MHTL, the lo­cal nat­ur­al gas ag­gre­ga­tor and mar­keter.

The agree­ment, which marked the cul­mi­na­tion of many months of ne­go­ti­a­tions, will add sta­bil­i­ty to T&T’s petro­chem­i­cal sec­tor, as it will gov­ern sup­ply to crit­i­cal methanol-pro­duc­ing fa­cil­i­ties on the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate (PLIE), NGC said in a news re­lease.

MHTL is a lead­ing play­er in the glob­al methanol in­dus­try that op­er­ates five plants, in­clud­ing the M5000 fa­cil­i­ty, which is con­sid­ered one of the largest stand-alone methanol plants in the world.

Com­ment­ing on the sign­ing of the gas sales con­tract, NGC pres­i­dent Mark Lo­quan said: “NGC has been work­ing tire­less­ly over the past months on down­stream gas sales agree­ments, and we are pleased to have brought this crit­i­cal con­tract ne­go­ti­a­tion to a suc­cess­ful close.

“In Pro­man and MHTL, we found pro­fes­sion­al and col­lab­o­ra­tive part­ners, as ded­i­cat­ed to a mu­tu­al­ly agree­able out­come as we have been. I want to com­mend all our teams for their un­wa­ver­ing com­mit­ment as we worked through this agree­ment, bear­ing cur­rent and prospec­tive in­dus­try con­di­tions in mind.

“We look for­ward to fur­ther strength­en­ing our re­la­tion­ship with the Pro­man fam­i­ly of com­pa­nies in the years to come, to build a stronger, more sus­tain­able petro­chem­i­cal in­dus­try for the fu­ture.”

Ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of Pro­man Trinidad, Claus Cron­berg­er said: “We are pleased to have signed the new gas sales con­tract with the NGC for our methanol fa­cil­i­ties in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“Our methanol plants on the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate, and the high­ly skilled team who op­er­ate them, are an im­por­tant part of Pro­man’s glob­al pro­duc­tion port­fo­lio and rep­re­sent a sig­nif­i­cant part of the lo­cal en­er­gy sec­tor.

“I would like to thank the NGC team in­volved in achiev­ing the suc­cess­ful con­clu­sion of this ne­go­ti­a­tion. We look for­ward to on­go­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion with our NGC part­ners and the Gov­ern­ment of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go as we es­tab­lish the path­way for methanol as a low­er-emis­sion fu­el of the fu­ture with a key role to play in the en­er­gy tran­si­tion.”

MHTL was es­tab­lished in 1999 by Cli­co, which was the ma­jor­i­ty share­hold­er with 56.53 per cent, and Pro­man which held 43.47 per cent.

Fol­low­ing the col­lapse of the CL Fi­nan­cial em­pire in 2009, the Gov­ern­ment ac­quired Cli­co’s stake in MHTL as part of its bailout of the in­sur­ance com­pa­ny and its par­ent, CL Fi­nan­cial.

That ac­tion was chal­lenged by Pro­man at the In­ter­na­tion­al Court of Ar­bi­tra­tion, which found that the Gov­ern­ment’s ac­tions amount­ed to op­pres­sion of the mi­nor­i­ty share­hold­er.

The In­ter­na­tion­al Court of Ar­bi­tra­tion di­rect­ed that the 56.53 per cent of MHTL should be sold to Pro­man sub­sidiary, Con­sol­i­dat­ed En­er­gy Ltd, for US$1.175 bil­lion.