On Thurs­day Feb­ru­ary 24, 203 days ago, the Busi­ness Guardian (BG) car­ried a head­line ‘Se­cret deal: Govt agrees At­lantic LNG Train 1 is dead’. It was the lead sto­ry that spoke of the end of T&T’s first LNG train, and it hav­ing to be moth­balled.

The fol­low­ing is part of that ar­ti­cle:

The Kei­th Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion has qui­et­ly walked away from any hope of sal­vaging At­lantic LNG Train 1 and has in­stead signed an agree­ment with Roy­al Dutch Shell, the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny and bpTT to uni­tise trains two, three and four in­to a sin­gle train.

The Gov­ern­ment had an­nounced the plan to have a sin­gle LNG train fa­cil­i­ty and that it had signed a Heads of Agree­ment (HOA) with the multi­na­tion­als and the state-owned com­pa­ny, but it has nev­er told the coun­try the terms of the agree­ment.

The Busi­ness Guardian has, how­ev­er, re­ceived a copy of the HOA and it shows that the Gov­ern­ment has agreed to the three-train fa­cil­i­ty.

In the HOA, the Gov­ern­ment iden­ti­fied one of its main ob­jec­tives as be­ing, “the sus­tained op­er­a­tion of the uni­tised fa­cil­i­ty as a three-train fa­cil­i­ty.”

T&T has four LNG trains.

The Busi­ness Guardian has al­so learnt that in the process, Chi­nese in­vestors in Train 1 are out and NGC’s share­hold­ing in the re­struc­tured en­ti­ty will not be af­fect­ed by the clo­sure of Train 1. This was con­firmed to the NGC by bpTT and Shell, the two ma­jor share­hold­ers in At­lantic LNG.

In an­nounc­ing the sign­ing of the HOA, a re­lease from the Min­istry of En­er­gy said, “The At­lantic LNG fa­cil­i­ty com­pris­es four (4) LNG Trains, each with dif­fer­ent share­hold­er struc­tures and com­mer­cial arrange­ments. It was agreed that the At­lantic LNG fa­cil­i­ties would be man­aged more ef­fi­cient­ly if brought un­der the frame­work of a sin­gle own­er­ship struc­ture.” Giv­ing the im­pres­sion that the re­struc­tur­ing in­volved all four trains when it knew ful­ly this was not on the ta­ble ...

The HOA is ef­fec­tive­ly the fi­nal nail in the Train 1 saga, which has seen more than a quar­ter bil­lion of tax­pay­ers’ dol­lars wast­ed by the NGC in a failed at­tempt to re­vive the fa­cil­i­ty. Train 1 has been shut now for more than a year and the NGC’s ef­fort re­sult­ed in di­rec­tors of the com­pa­ny seek­ing to be pro­tect­ed from be­ing held li­able for the loss­es by seek­ing an in­dem­ni­ty from cor­po­ra­tion sole for loss of the mon­ey.

Fur­ther, the Gov­ern­ment, led by the Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and the Min­is­ter of En­er­gy Stu­art Young, have con­sis­tent­ly said Train 1 is not yet dead and was sub­ject to ne­go­ti­a­tions. The HOA now shows that both Row­ley and Young are aware that Train 1 is no more.

This means that the coun­try has lost a quar­ter of its LNG ca­pac­i­ty and will now have to live in the long term with low­er LNG ex­ports, even though the re­turns per mol­e­cule of nat­ur­al gas could be bet­ter de­pend­ing on the out­come of the fi­nal ne­go­ti­a­tions.

On Mon­day, the Prime Min­is­ter, flanked by his Gary Sobers, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young, an­nounced what this news­pa­per told the coun­try months ago and which for some in­ex­plic­a­ble rea­son, the Gov­ern­ment re­fused to con­firm - that we are in a sit­u­a­tion where the gas was sim­ply not avail­able for Train 1 and as a re­sult, it has to be shut down.

Dr Row­ley told a news con­fer­ence, “We have four LNG plants, Train 1, which is the old­est one, came to the end of its con­tract life re­cent­ly and has been shut down, moth­balled, large­ly be­cause there isn’t enough gas to run four trains. That leaves us with three trains.”

I am glad that the Prime Min­is­ter has fi­nal­ly come out and ad­mit­ted to the coun­try what is the state of play. I sus­pect that his re­luc­tance to do so in Feb­ru­ary 2022 was a con­cern that it would com­pound how poor the de­ci­sion of the Board and Man­age­ment of the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny was, to throw away a quar­ter bil­lion dol­lars be­hind a scheme to restart Train 1, bet­ting that the petro­chem­i­cal pro­duc­ers would not want ac­cess to their con­tract­ed quan­ti­ties of gas, and some­how imag­in­ing that the de­pressed petro­chem­i­cal mar­ket of ear­ly 2021 would re­main so for a long time.

If ever there was a risky ven­ture, this was one and as could have been pre­dict­ed, the NGC and tax­pay­ers lost a quar­ter bil­lion dol­lars; it sim­ply went down the drain. No one is held to ac­count, the very Prime Min­is­ter de­fend­ed the board and man­age­ment of the NGC, those who op­posed the scheme were re­moved from the board and the coun­try moved on be­cause as the PM him­self lament­ed, many peo­ple in T&T do not keep a close eye on what is hap­pen­ing in the en­er­gy sec­tor.

It is sad that we have come to this, that we have put off telling the coun­try the truth for months and even in do­ing so, it is said in such a way that the me­dia could have and eas­i­ly missed the sig­nif­i­cance.

What was not missed is the re­al­i­ty that we are not just at an in­flec­tion point but on the brink of cri­sis. For years, this col­umn has sought to warn the coun­try of the re­al chal­lenges fac­ing the en­er­gy sec­tor and the im­pact of the in­er­tia of this Gov­ern­ment.

The Min­is­ter of Every­thing and the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance led the charge in seek­ing to at­tack the Busi­ness Guardian, ably as­sist­ed by their helpers on Face­book Live, but the truth al­ways comes to the fore and I am glad that the PM has seen the mo­ment of reck­on­ing is here.

We must build a coun­try where the Gov­ern­ment trusts its cit­i­zens to di­a­logue on is­sues, at times ac­cept­ing that it does not know it all, to come down from there, and un­der­stand that ad­vice from any quar­ter should be fil­tered and con­sid­ered.

No one chal­lenges the Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion’s right to gov­ern the coun­try, but it will do well to lev­el with the pub­lic and not hide be­hind the no­tion that it knows all be­cause it is seized with in­for­ma­tion that no one else has. That is on­ly good for self-grat­i­fi­ca­tion and nev­er see come see gov­er­nance.

We need a gov­ern­ment and a so­ci­ety will­ing to ac­cept ideas and in­ter­ests, even when they are at vari­ance with our own world view. That is the on­ly way we will make T&T stronger.

The bat­tle has been joined and I urge the Gov­ern­ment to not see peo­ple who don’t agree with what it is do­ing as en­e­mies, or that on­ly the views of sup­port­ers should be con­sid­ered. What it must al­ways put first is T&T’s in­ter­est. If we do that, we will get out of the cri­sis.