Rhon­dor Dowlat

CEO of the En­er­gy Cham­ber of T&T Thack­wray "Dax" Dri­ver sees the Caribbean Gas Chem­i­cal Ltd (CG­CL) deal as a ma­jor cap­i­tal in­vest­ment in T&T.

Dri­ver was giv­ing his views about the new CG­CL agree­ment signed on Mon­day be­tween the Gov­ern­ment and four in­vestors- the Sta­te­owned Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny, Mit­subishi Gas Chem­i­cal Com­pa­ny, Mit­subishi Cor­po­ra­tion, of Japan and lo­cal con­glom­er­ate Massy Hold­ings to con­struct a petro­chem­i­cal com­plex com­pris­ing methanol and di­methyl ether (DME) plants in La Brea with an in­vest­ment of about US$1 bil­lion.

On Thurs­day, Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Le­gal Af­fairs Stu­art Young raised con­cerns about the ini­tial agree­ment signed un­der the then Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship which he said had the po­ten­tial to ex­pose T&T to bil­lion of dol­lars in claims.

Young al­so claimed that for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Garvin Nicholas was pres­sured in­to sign­ing off the project de­vel­op­ment agree­ment on elec­tion day, Sep­tem­ber 7, 2015.

In April 2013, then en­er­gy min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine had signed the agree­ment with the in­vestors. Yes­ter­day, Dri­ver said ma­jor cap­i­tal in­vest­ments such as these add fur­ther val­ue to the econ­o­my and dri­ve eco­nom­ic growth.

"The plant's con­struc­tion will cre­ate many short-term jobs in La Brea and sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ties and, once in op­er­a­tions, there will long-term se­cure jobs and op­por­tu­ni­ties for eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty for oth­er com­pa­nies sell­ing goods and ser­vice to the fa­cil­i­ty. It is very pos­i­tive for Trinidad & To­ba­go to at­tract a ma­jor in­vest­ment from a di­ver­si­fied Japan­ese con­glom­er­ate," said Dri­ver.

He said he hoped that this in­vest­ment will be a pos­i­tive ex­pe­ri­ence for Mit­subishi and he hoped that the cor­po­ra­tion would con­sid­er fu­ture in­vest­ments, in­clud­ing out­side of petro­chem­i­cals.

He said methanol was used as an in­put in many oth­er chem­i­cals and de­mand for it tends to cor­re­late with over­all glob­al eco­nom­ic growth, es­pe­cial­ly if there was growth in sec­tors like home con­struc­tion.

"There is al­so sig­nif­i­cant growth in the use of methanol as a clean­burn­ing fu­el. Cur­rent glob­al ini­tia­tives to re­duce pol­lu­tion and in­crease ef­fi­cien­cy of trans­port fu­els means that de­mand for methanol in the fu­el sec­tor is like­ly to in­crease, es­pe­cial­ly in Chi­na."

While there is a de­mand for methanol in all ma­jor in­dus­tri­al mar­kets, Dri­ver said, "Chi­na is an im­por­tant and grow­ing mar­ket."

With Gov­ern­ment, through NGC, be­ing a 20 per cent share­hold­er in this deal, Dri­ver said re­turns from a ma­jor in­vest­ment such as this will come in the medi­um to long-term.

"Gov­ern­ment rev­enue will come both from the div­i­dend pay­ments via the NGC and from cor­po­ra­tion and oth­er tax­es on the plant. It will not pro­vide di­rect rev­enue to the State in the short-term."

Dri­ver said the En­er­gy Cham­ber has a deep and on­go­ing re­la­tion­ship with the share­hold­ers in the project. "We have worked close­ly with the project de­vel­op­ers to pro­vide train­ing and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion in ba­sic HSE aware­ness to po­ten­tial con­struc­tion work­ers in the La Brea com­mu­ni­ty," he said.

Yes­ter­day, Nicholas did not re­spond to sev­er­al ques­tions emailed to him, among them if he had picked up any­thing un­usu­al in the agree­ment.

Nicholas al­so re­fused to say if he was caught in a tick­lish sit­u­a­tion in sign­ing the agree­ment.

He said he had noth­ing to de­fend since he did not sign off on the doc­u­ment.

"I re­ceived the doc­u­ments a few days be­fore Sep­tem­ber 7, I can­not re­call ex­act­ly when," Nicholas said.

Asked if the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment had tried to use him as a scape­goat in this deal, Nicholas wrote "I couldn't com­ment on the scape­goat­ing al­le­ga­tions as I have no in­for­ma­tion on this. I didn't hear what was said at post-Cab­i­net," Nicholas wrote.

Re­spond­ing to text mes­sages yes­ter­day Young said "I will be mak­ing a full and de­tailed state­ment in Par­lia­ment." Ram­nar­ine stat­ed that he was "not yet ready to com­ment on Mit­subishi."

Days be­fore the last gen­er­al elec­tion, then prime min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar turned the sod for the com­plex.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar did not re­spond to a text mes­sage, while Ger­ry Brooks chair­man of NGC Group of Com­pa­nies was in a meet­ing

ABOUT THE COM­PLEX

The project aims to pro­duce 1 mil­lion tonnes of methanol and 100,000 tonnes of di­methyl ether (DME) per year with an in­vest­ment of US$850 mil­lion or $5.4 bil­lion.

The project will ini­tial­ly use 100 mil­lion stan­dard cu­bic feet per day of nat­ur­al gas to pro­duce the 1 mil­lion tonnes of methanol, of which 140,000 tonnes will be used to pro­duce the 100,000 tons of DME.