Near record glob­al prices for am­mo­nia and high methanol prices have led to com­pa­nies on the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate op­er­at­ing at ca­pac­i­ty and has re­sult­ed in greater prof­its for both the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (NGC) and Phoenix Park Gas Proces­sors Lim­it­ed (PPG­PL).

Last week PPG­PL re­leased its au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ment for the year end­ed De­cem­ber 31, 2021 in which the com­pa­ny record­ed an af­ter-tax prof­it of TT $512.8 mil­lion, which rep­re­sents a 373.6 per cent in­crease over the 2020 re­sults of TT$6.4 mil­lion (ex­clud­ing 2021: im­pair­ment gain of TT$302.1mil­lion; 2020: im­pair­ment loss of TT$38.1 mil­lion).

Earn­ings per share have al­so in­creased from the 2020 TT$0.04 to TT$3.31 at end of 2021.

It was al­so not­ed that PPG­PL record­ed a prof­it af­ter tax of TT$545.0 mil­lion at year end 2021, a 366.6 per cent im­prove­ment when com­pared to TT$116.8 mil­lion for the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od of 2020.

This strong per­for­mance stemmed from high­er recog­nised Mont Belvieu NGL prod­uct prices, which were 112.3 per cent greater than 2020, and im­proved NGL pro­duc­tion from the high­er mar­gin gas pro­cess­ing seg­ment.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, NGL pro­duc­tion from gas pro­cess­ing was 11.8 per cent high­er than 2020 and was dri­ven by a 7.7 per cent in­crease in gas vol­umes for pro­cess­ing (2021: 1,141 mil­lion stan­dard cu­bic feet per day), the state­ment said.

A five per cent in­crease in the NGL con­tent of the gas stream was al­so record­ed

PPG­PL’s Pres­i­dent Do­minic Ram­per­sad said there was an in­crease in the gas avail­able for pro­cess­ing by PPG­PL and this was a di­rect re­sult of the Petro­chem­i­cal plants op­er­at­ing at high­er out­put.

He ex­plained, “What I can say is what we have seen hap­pen­ing on the es­tate, be­cause am­mo­nia prices are so high, methanol prices are high, it is caus­ing those com­pa­nies that may have been op­er­at­ing at less than full ca­pac­i­ty, they have remped up ca­pac­i­ty. So the de­mand on the es­tate has ac­tu­al­ly ramped up.

“What we have al­so been see­ing on the LNG side is that they tend to fluc­tu­ate be­cause of their main­te­nance and dif­fer­ent things, but I don’t think what we are see­ing on the es­tate is a func­tion of what is hap­pen­ing at the LNG, I think it is a func­tion of what is hap­pen­ing down­stream.”

He said the out­put from the Petro­chem­i­cal sec­tor has re­turned to pre-COVID days.

“The per­cent­age has gone up from my per­spec­tive, it has re­al­ly gone back to what it was pre-COVID, re­mem­ber one of the oth­er things as well that has caused the in­crease in our vol­umes is the liq­uid con­tent in the gas, that we have seen as well.”

Ram­per­sad al­so said part of last year’s suc­cess is the strat­e­gy of the NGC to have more liq­uid rich gas come to the es­tate.

“What we have seen is more BHP gas com­ing in­to the sys­tem, what we’ve seen is less Shell gas com­ing in­to the sys­tem from the east coast and more bpTT gas has been com­ing in­to the sys­tem con­sis­tent with what I un­der­stand to be con­trac­tu­al oblig­a­tions to the NGC which I don’t know the de­tails of.”

He was asked whether from PPGL’s per­spec­tive it makes more sense to have more nat­ur­al gas sent to the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate than to LNG be­cause his com­pa­ny gets more rev­enue from pro­cess­ing the gas rich in liq­uids rather than what it gets from nat­ur­al gas liq­uids as a by prod­uct of the LNG process Ram­per­sad said sim­ply ‘yes.”

“The long and short an­swer is sim­ply yes.” He told the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian.

Pushed fur­ther if that meant the NGC’s loss of quar­ter bil­lion dol­lars on an at­tempt to save train 1 rather than fo­cus on the Es­tate was a bad strate­gic move Ram­per­sad was guard­ed.

“To be hon­est, I did not, I have no, I am not privy to the as­sess­ment done by the NGC in­to Train 1, so I can’t give you an hon­est an­swer to that. I re­al­ly was not privy to that in­for­ma­tion, so I don’t know the eco­nom­ics of what was done.” Ram­per­sad told the SBG.

He added; “”From a PPGL per­spec­tive the more gas that flows to Pt Lisas, we ben­e­fit more from that, giv­en our con­trac­tu­al arrange­ments with NGC and our con­trac­tu­al arrange­ments with At­lantic. So the more gas that comes through the gas pro­cess­ing at the in­let ben­e­fits us more than, even if you were to send more gas to At­lantic, the NGLs that come from At­lantic, our prof­it that we earn from those NGLs will be less than we get from our gas.”