The Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go Lim­it­ed (NGC) has an­nounced af­ter-tax prof­it of over $1 bil­lion.

NGC re­leased its unau­dit­ed con­sol­i­dat­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments for the nine-month pe­ri­od end­ed 30 Sep­tem­ber 2021 yes­ter­day.

Group Chair­man Con­rad Enill said the re­sults sig­nalled a strong re­cov­ery rel­a­tive to 2020, as the NGC Group record­ed an unau­dit­ed af­ter-tax prof­it of TT$1.045 bil­lion for the re­port­ing pe­ri­od.

This rep­re­sents a 2,588 per cent in­crease over the loss of $42 mil­lion for the pri­or pe­ri­od last year.

Rev­enues for the pe­ri­od stood at TT$15.6 bil­lion as com­pared with TT$8.1 bil­lion in 2020, an in­crease of 98 per cent over the pri­or pe­ri­od.

“Af­ter a dif­fi­cult year for the glob­al in­dus­try, The NGC Group has re­bound­ed with great agili­ty, prov­ing once more its ca­pac­i­ty to nav­i­gate change, evolve and pros­per. In all that we un­der­take, we are com­mit­ted as ever to the prin­ci­ples of good gov­er­nance, trans­paren­cy, ac­count­abil­i­ty and re­spon­si­ble lead­er­ship, and our ul­ti­mate goal re­mains ser­vice to coun­try,” Enill said.

He added, “As our peo­ple re­tool for the new nor­mal, and we re­source the or­gan­i­sa­tion for a new en­er­gy land­scape, we ex­pect to build on the suc­cess­es of the past 46 years to con­tin­ue de­liv­er­ing ex­cep­tion­al val­ue for Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

Enill stressed that the Group’s strong per­for­mance was al­so a func­tion of clear strat­e­gy, sol­id in­ter­nal process­es, and lever­ag­ing favourable mar­ket con­di­tions.

NGC’s state­ment said that in ad­di­tion, in­ten­sive fo­cus has been placed on ad­dress­ing ar­eas of val­ue leak­age and op­por­tu­ni­ties for val­ue cre­ation, both with a view to se­cur­ing long term sus­tain­abil­i­ty.

“In­ter­na­tion­al bench­mark­ing re­mains stan­dard prac­tice and is help­ing to build best-in-class op­er­a­tions. Ex­ter­nal mar­ket fac­tors al­so dri­ving this per­for­mance in­clude stronger de­mand for nat­ur­al gas and en­er­gy prod­ucts as pan­dem­ic re­stric­tions are stepped back across the world and in­dus­tri­al ac­tiv­i­ty re­gains mo­men­tum,” the state­ment said.

It added that low­er in­ven­to­ries of gas and the ap­proach­ing win­ter sea­son have al­so con­tributed to high­er gas prices, par­tic­u­lar­ly in Eu­ro­pean mar­kets.

Over the re­port­ing pe­ri­od, NGC said it main­tained its fo­cus on gas sup­ply sta­bil­i­ty.

“Progress was made on the mon­eti­sa­tion of small and mar­gin­al fields, as a Gas Sales Con­tract (GSC) was signed with De­N­o­vo En­er­gy Lim­it­ed for gas from the Zan­dolie Field. Al­so in the up­stream, The NGC Group com­plet­ed its ac­qui­si­tion of the Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed’s Non-Op­er­at­ed Joint Ven­ture (NO­JV) par­tic­i­pat­ing in­ter­est in Block 3(a), in­creas­ing its stake from 11.41per cent to 31.54per cent. This pro­vid­ed ad­di­tion­al eq­ui­ty crude to en­hance the En­er­gy Mar­ket­ing and Trad­ing port­fo­lio re­sults.”

PPG­PL con­tin­ues to demon­strate a sol­id per­for­mance and its North Amer­i­can sub­sidiary, Phoenix Park Trinidad and To­ba­go En­er­gy Hold­ings Lim­it­ed (PPT­TEHL) yield­ed a sig­nif­i­cant 5per cent to PPG­PL’s prof­it af­ter tax.”

NGC said that the Green Agen­da was an­oth­er ma­jor work­stream be­ing pro­gressed.

The Cari­Green web­site was launched in June 2021 to fa­cil­i­tate in­vestor, aca­d­e­m­ic and cit­i­zen re­search in­to clean en­er­gy across the re­gion. Sub­sidiary Na­tion­al En­er­gy in­stalled a rooftop so­lar ar­ray on the new state-of-the-art Preysal Ser­vice Sta­tion to pow­er its op­er­a­tions. The Group al­so signed a Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing with the Trinidad and To­ba­go Sol­id Waste Man­age­ment Com­pa­ny (SWM­COL) to ex­am­ine the pos­si­bil­i­ties of har­vest­ing and us­ing do­mes­tic land­fill gas as an al­ter­na­tive mo­tor fu­el.

It said that in the back­ground, the fo­cus on re­duc­ing methane emis­sions, clean en­er­gy ad­vo­ca­cy and pub­lic sen­si­ti­sa­tion to is­sues of ef­fi­cien­cy and sus­tain­abil­i­ty re­mained strong.