Cur­tis Williams

cur­tis.williams@guardian.co.tt

Caribbean Gas Chem­i­cal Lim­it­ed (CG­CL) has loaded its first car­go of methanol as it starts ex­port of the com­mod­i­ty.

The ship­ment comes more than five years af­ter the break­ing of ground for the con­struc­tion of the methanol to Di­methyl Ether (DME) plant at La Brea and is a sig­nif­i­cant step for­ward for the com­pa­ny.

In a news re­lease CG­CL said the ship­ment was loaded on-board the M/T Trans Cat­alo­nia at LABID­CO’s Port of Brighton La Brea.

CG­CL said 13,000 met­ric tons of methanol were loaded on­to the ves­sel. This is like­ly to in­crease this coun­try's ex­port of methanol which has been hard-hit by the clo­sure of plants at the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate ow­ing to de­pressed in­ter­na­tion­al prices for the com­mod­i­ty and high­er nat­ur­al gas prices in T&T.

Nat­ur­al gas is the ma­jor feed­stock in the pro­duc­tion of methanol and it is be­lieved that CG­CL, which is part­ly owned by the NGC, has ben­e­fit­ed from favourable gas prices.

CG­CL’s Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer (CEO), Naka­ba Aoy­a­gi, ex­pressed sat­is­fac­tion with the com­pa­ny be­ing at the cusp of ex­port­ing its first car­go and re­marked: “This is a great day for CG­CL! The team has worked tire­less­ly to get us to this point amid a dread­ful pan­dem­ic and I am ex­treme­ly proud for the achieve­ment of this re­mark­able mile­stone for both the com­pa­ny and the coun­try.”

CG­CL com­menced con­struc­tion of its US$990 mil­lion dol­lars Methanol and Di-Methyl Ether (DME) Fa­cil­i­ty at Union In­dus­tri­al Es­tate (UIE), La Brea, in Sep­tem­ber 2015 and achieved Me­chan­i­cal Com­ple­tion on June 27, 2020. At the height of con­struc­tion, the project em­ployed over two thou­sand (2000) in­di­vid­u­als, many of whom resided with­in La Brea and its fence-line com­mu­ni­ties. Com­mer­cial op­er­a­tion of the Fa­cil­i­ty is ex­pect­ed with­in 4Q 2020. At its peak, the Fa­cil­i­ty will pro­duce 1,000,000 met­ric tonnes of Methanol and 20,000 met­ric tonnes of DME per year.

CG­CL is a joint ven­ture led by a con­sor­tium com­pris­ing Mit­subishi Gas Chem­i­cal Com­pa­ny, Inc., Mit­subishi Cor­po­ra­tion, Mit­subishi Heavy In­dus­tries, En­gi­neer­ing Ltd., The Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go Lim­it­ed and Massy Hold­ings Lim­it­ed. The strate­gic part­ner­ship al­lows for sup­port­ive fi­nanc­ing and in­dus­try co­op­er­a­tion among lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al stake­hold­ers.

When asked about the strate­gic val­ue of the part­ner­ship arrange­ment, CEO, Aoy­a­gi said “The Gov­ern­ment of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go has con­firmed the strate­gic im­por­tance of the petro­chem­i­cal in­dus­try to Trinidad and To­ba­go’s econ­o­my by en­cour­ag­ing pri­vate/for­eign in­vest­ment in the down­stream, there­by stim­u­lat­ing for­eign

ex­change gen­er­a­tion, cre­at­ing high qual­i­ty jobs and stim­u­lat­ing the lo­cal eco­nom­ic mul­ti­pli­er ef­fect through the con­tract­ing of a mul­ti­tude of lo­cal ser­vices over the life of the in­vest­ment. CG­CL looks for­wards to do­ing its part in boost­ing the lo­cal econ­o­my through its ef­forts and con­tri­bu­tions and in­tends to play an in­te­gral role in the de­liv­ery of clean­er en­er­gy, to the world.”