State-owned Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) yes­ter­day con­firmed that it signed a gas sales con­tract with Methanol Hold­ings Trinidad Ltd (MHTL) for the AUM 11 com­plex at Point Lisas last month. In a five-sen­tence re­lease, NGC said the ne­go­ti­a­tions be­tween MHTL and NGC were con­duct­ed over the last year.

"MHTL had been a long stand­ing and valu­able cus­tomer of NGC and al­ready has five ex­ist­ing gas sales con­tracts with the NGC. This new con­tract for AUM11 is a con­tin­u­a­tion of this part­ner­ship," ac­cord­ing to the state­ment. The Guardian yes­ter­day re­port­ed that the nat­ur­al gas sup­ply con­tract was agreed just weeks be­fore ar­bi­tra­tors in Lon­don are due to rule on whether the Gov­ern­ment breached the le­gal rights of the Ger­man mi­nor­i­ty share­hold­ers of Methanol Hold­ings (Trinidad) Ltd.

The news­pa­per re­port­ed that the gas sup­ply con­tract was for 20 year and that NGC com­mit­ted to sup­ply 100 mil­lion cu­bic feet per day of nat­ur­al gas that would be used by MHTL's pro­posed US$2 bil­lion AUM II (am­mo­nia-urea-melamine) com­plex. The com­plex is due to be­gin con­struc­tion ear­ly next year. The agree­ment was first re­port­ed in a sto­ry on the Oil and Gas Jour­nal Web site.

Some 56.53 per cent of MHTL is owned by Cli­co, the fi­nan­cial­ly trou­bled in­sur­ance com­pa­ny, while 43.47 per cent is owned by Con­sol­i­dat­ed En­er­gy Ltd, a con­sor­tium com­pris­ing Ger­man com­pa­nies Fer­rostaal AG, Helm AG and Pro­man. While MHTL is ma­jor­i­ty owned by Cli­co, the in­sur­ance com­pa­ny it­self is legal­ly un­der the con­trol of the Cen­tral Bank with 49 per cent of its eq­ui­ty be­ing owned by the Gov­ern­ment as a re­sult of a $5 bil­lion bailout by the State in 2009 and 2010. Fifty-one per cent of Cli­co con­tin­ues to be owned by CL Fi­nan­cial, the con­glom­er­ate once chaired by Lawrence Duprey that col­lapsed in Jan­u­ary 2009.

Con­sol­i­dat­ed En­er­gy ar­gued be­fore the in­ter­na­tion­al ar­bi­tra­tion tri­bunal in Lon­don in May that the Gov­ern­ment bailout of Cli­co im­pinged on the share­hold­ers' agree­ment that es­tab­lished MHTL, which al­lows the Ger­man mi­nor­i­ty share­hold­ers to ac­quire the ma­jor­i­ty share­hold­ing from Cli­co if there were ever a change of own­er­ship at the in­sur­ance com­pa­ny.

At­tor­neys for Con­sol­i­dat­ed En­er­gy ar­gued that the Gov­ern­ment's in­vest­ment of $5 bil­lion in Cli­co and its ac­qui­si­tion of the 49 per cent stake, along with the Gov­ern­ment's ef­fec­tive con­trol of MHTL, con­sti­tut­ed change of own­er­ship. Ac­cord­ing to MHTL's Web site, the com­pa­ny's chair­man is Jagdeesh Siewrat­tan and its di­rec­tors are Ger­ald Yet­ming, Car­olyn John, Daryl Jones and Denyse Mehta. Al­so serv­ing as di­rec­tors are Joseph Cas­sidy, Rolf Mey­er-Ot­tens, Jan Sech­er and Ram­per­sad Moti­lal, the man­ag­ing di­rec­tor.

The ar­bi­tra­tors are due to hand down their rul­ing in ear­ly Au­gust, ac­cord­ing to gov­ern­ment sources. If the ar­gu­ment of the mi­nor­i­ty share­hold­ers finds favour with the ar­bi­tra­tors, the Gov­ern­ment could be or­dered to sell the ma­jor­i­ty stake in MHTL to Con­sol­i­dat­ed En­er­gy at a fair mar­ket price. NGC said it had "no po­si­tion" on the de­tails of MHTL's busi­ness trans­ac­tions and that it main­tained our mu­tu­al re­la­tion­ship via sup­ply and pur­chase of nat­ur­al gas.