An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

An­oth­er of the ma­jor petro­chem­i­cal in­vestors on the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate has raised doubts about the com­pa­ny’s con­tin­ued op­er­a­tion in T&T, fol­low­ing years of gas cur­tail­ment and re­cent moves by whol­ly state-owned Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) to in­crease the price of nat­ur­al gas to the sec­tor.

In its first quar­ter earn­ings call on April 30, 2026, Rich Sum­n­er, the CEO and pres­i­dent of the Van­cov­er, Cana­da-head­quar­tered Methanex, said the com­pa­ny is con­sid­er­ing “all pos­si­ble out­comes,” in­clud­ing the po­ten­tial idling of its pro­duc­ing methanol plant or a short-term gas con­tract.

Methanex is the world’s largest methanol pro­duc­er and sup­pli­er of methanol.

Asked by a sec­tor an­a­lyst if Methanex would con­sid­er en­ter­ing in­to a short-term gas sup­ply con­tract to keep its Ti­tan plant run­ning when the com­pa­ny’s two-year con­tract ends in Sep­tem­ber, Sum­n­er said the methanol pro­duc­er is in dis­cus­sions with NGC.

“We’re con­sid­er­ing all pos­si­ble range of out­comes through those dis­cus­sions, in­clud­ing a short-term deal as well as the po­ten­tial to have to idle the plants. It’ll come down to those NGC dis­cus­sions,” said the Methanex pres­i­dent.

He said in the short term, T&T “is an ex­treme­ly tight gas mar­ket, with LNG, am­mo­nia and methanol, all op­er­at­ing be­low the name­plate ca­pac­i­ty.” As a re­sult of that tight­ness, a great deal is go­ing to come down to the com­mer­cial dis­cus­sions be­tween Methanex and NGC.

Sum­n­er said the com­pa­ny is look­ing longer term in T&T and what op­tions may arise in the fu­ture.

“But we do think any new gas from Venezuela is quite a ways out and al­so car­ries risk on whether it can ever flow to methanol eco­nom­i­cal­ly. So there’s a lot for us to con­sid­er there, but, yeah, we would look at short term. If we can’t get the short and the medi­um term to work to­geth­er, we’re al­so hav­ing to look at oth­er out­comes out of those dis­cus­sions (with NGC),” said Sum­n­er.

Methanex in­vest­ed in two methanol plants in T&T called At­las and Ti­tan. The com­pa­ny idled its At­las plant, which it owned 63.1 per cent of, in Sep­tem­ber 2024 and restart­ed the Ti­tan fa­cil­i­ty, which is 100 per cent owned by the Cana­di­an com­pa­ny.

Nu­trien re­view adds fur­ther un­cer­tain­ty  

Adding to the pres­sure at Point Lisas, Nu­trien Ltd is re­view­ing strate­gic op­tions for its Trinidad ni­tro­gen op­er­a­tions, in­clud­ing a po­ten­tial sale of its fa­cil­i­ty.
Last Oc­to­ber, Cana­di­an am­mo­nia and urea pro­duc­er, Nu­trien, an­nounced the con­trolled shut­down of its five-plant fa­cil­i­ty at Point Lisas, cit­ing "port ac­cess re­stric­tions im­posed by T&T’s Na­tion­al En­er­gy Cor­po­ra­tion (NEC) and a lack of re­li­able and eco­nom­ic nat­ur­al gas sup­ply that has re­duced the free cash flow con­tri­bu­tion of the Trinidad ni­tro­gen (am­mo­nia and urea) op­er­a­tions over an ex­tend­ed pe­ri­od of time.

Guardian Me­dia ob­tained a memo to Nu­trien Trinidad cir­cu­lat­ed last week af­ter the com­pa­ny’s quar­ter­ly earn­ings call, con­firm­ing that Nu­trien is eval­u­at­ing “all strate­gic op­tions” for the op­er­a­tion.
The memo stat­ed that there is “no pre­de­ter­mined out­come” and no fi­nal de­ci­sion has been made re­gard­ing the fu­ture of the fa­cil­i­ty.
Re­spond­ing to a Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian ques­tion on Fri­day, a com­pa­ny spokesman said, "Nu­trien con­tin­ues to eval­u­ate all strate­gic op­tions , in­clud­ing ex­plo­ration of a po­ten­tial sale of the fa­cil­i­ty."

In its first-quar­ter 2026 fi­nan­cial re­port, Nu­trien con­firmed there has been “no pro­duc­tion from the Trinidad and New Madrid fa­cil­i­ties” fol­low­ing con­trolled shut­downs.
The re­view comes amid broad­er un­cer­tain­ty across Trinidad’s am­mo­nia and methanol sec­tor, where mul­ti­ple plants re­main of­fline or un­der­utilised due to feed­stock con­straints.

Sev­er­al plants across the in­dus­tri­al es­tate have been shut­down. Plants that have been idled in­clude: Methanex's At­las; an am­mo­nia plant owned by Nor­way's Yara; the five plants op­er­at­ed by Nu­trien and Pro­man’s M2, M3 (methanol) plants and its melamine fa­cil­i­ty. Pro­man’s M4 and M5 fa­cil­i­ties have al­so been run­ning at re­duced rates.

NGC po­si­tion on gas al­lo­ca­tion

The de­bate over gas al­lo­ca­tion has in­ten­si­fied across the en­er­gy sec­tor, with the NGC de­fend­ing its ap­proach to pri­ori­tis­ing na­tion­al re­turns over full in­dus­tri­al util­i­sa­tion.

NGC Chair­man Ger­ald Ramdeen, on May 1, dur­ing a ques­tion and an­swer seg­ment at a me­dia con­fer­ence, said the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s man­date is to en­sure gas is al­lo­cat­ed in a way that max­imis­es val­ue for the coun­try.
“The NGC must man­age the gas that it has in the best in­ter­est of the peo­ple first, as a pri­or­i­ty,” Ramdeen ex­plained, adding that al­lo­ca­tion de­ci­sions are based on re­turns rather than plant util­i­sa­tion.

“The pur­pose of the NGC is not to keep every plant on the Point Lisas Es­tate run­ning, sim­ply be­cause we want plants to be run­ning,” he said.
He not­ed that gas is lim­it­ed in both vol­ume and price and must be di­rect­ed to max­imise na­tion­al ben­e­fit.

“So there will be com­plaints all around, be­cause you have a lim­it­ed vol­ume of gas that you have to sup­ply to many dif­fer­ent peo­ple. But at the end of the day, our main pri­or­i­ty is the coun­try, Trinidad and To­ba­go, and to en­sure that the peo­ple of this coun­try get the best re­turns at this point in time,” Ramdeen out­lined.

He added that de­ci­sions are be­ing made with­in con­trac­tu­al oblig­a­tions while bal­anc­ing LNG re­quire­ments and down­stream sup­ply.

Pro­man ex­pand­ing in Mid­dle East

Pro­man is not tak­ing part as a lender in the US$2 bil­lion fi­nanc­ing pack­age for the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates’ first world-scale methanol plant, in­stead hold­ing an eq­ui­ty po­si­tion as a joint ven­ture part­ner. The com­pa­ny says the move forms part of its broad­er push to ex­pand glob­al pro­duc­tion ca­pac­i­ty, even as its T&T op­er­a­tions con­tin­ue to op­er­ate in a con­strained gas en­vi­ron­ment at Point Lisas.

The clar­i­fi­ca­tion comes as the TA’ZIZ Methanol Com­pa­ny project in Al Ruwais In­dus­tri­al City moves for­ward with a fi­nanc­ing struc­ture com­pris­ing a US$1.8 bil­lion five-year syn­di­cat­ed loan and a US$200 mil­lion Is­lam­ic fa­cil­i­ty. The pack­age was heav­i­ly over­sub­scribed and in­volved 11 re­gion­al, Eu­ro­pean, and Asian fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions.

Pro­man, head­quar­tered in Switzer­land with ma­jor op­er­a­tions at the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate in Cou­va, said in writ­ten re­spons­es to the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian that it is not part of the lend­ing syn­di­cate.

“Pro­man is not par­tic­i­pat­ing as a lender in the debt fi­nanc­ing but is con­tribut­ing sig­nif­i­cant eq­ui­ty as a joint ven­ture part­ner,” the com­pa­ny said.

The project forms part of a wider ex­pan­sion strat­e­gy for Pro­man, which op­er­ates methanol as­sets across mul­ti­ple ju­ris­dic­tions and has been linked to T&T’s petro­chem­i­cal sec­tor for more than four decades.

On com­mer­cial arrange­ments linked to the UAE project, Pro­man said, “Pro­man will mar­ket the methanol ex­clu­sive­ly via our mar­ket­ing arm, Valenz, af­ter sign­ing a long-term agree­ment with the joint ven­ture. We can­not dis­close the de­tails of the com­mer­cial agree­ment.”

It added that the de­vel­op­ment sup­ports its glob­al growth tra­jec­to­ry. “This is cer­tain­ly a fan­tas­tic op­por­tu­ni­ty as we in­crease our glob­al pro­duc­tion ca­pac­i­ty to 9 mil­lion tonnes and find new val­ue mar­kets for methanol in trans­porta­tion and pow­er gen­er­a­tion.”

Pro­man al­so placed the scale of its port­fo­lio in con­text, stat­ing “Glob­al mer­chant methanol pro­duc­tion is around 100m tonnes per year - so Pro­man’s 9 mil­lion ca­pac­i­ty is around 10 per cent of an­nu­al glob­al pro­duc­tion.”

Glob­al ex­pan­sion as Trinidad op­er­a­tions face con­straints

While Pro­man ad­vances new ca­pac­i­ty over­seas, its op­er­a­tions in T&T con­tin­ue to op­er­ate un­der pres­sure linked to gas avail­abil­i­ty and al­lo­ca­tion de­ci­sions across the en­er­gy sec­tor.

The com­pa­ny has in­vest­ed more than US$12.6 bil­lion in T&T over 40 years and is the coun­try’s largest petro­chem­i­cal pro­duc­ers and em­ploy­ers at Point Lisas.

De­spite its in­ter­na­tion­al ex­pan­sion, Pro­man said T&T re­mains cen­tral to its long-term in­vest­ment base.

The com­pa­ny con­firmed it is on track with its pre­vi­ous­ly an­nounced US$1.1 bil­lion in­vest­ment com­mit­ment over 10 years from 2022.

It said “We are well on course with de­liv­er­ing on our in­vest­ment promise in­to the coun­try.

Since 2022, we have al­ready spent close to US$350 mil­lion on a num­ber of ma­jor plant turn­arounds and up­grades, which al­so sup­ports a large con­trac­tor base.”

Pro­man em­pha­sised that in­vest­ment de­ci­sions across all re­gions are dri­ven by four main fac­tors: in­vest­ment cli­mate, re­li­able gas sup­ply, com­pet­i­tive gas pric­ing, ac­cess to end mar­kets, and strong stake­hold­er part­ner­ships.

The com­pa­ny al­so point­ed to di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion ef­forts, in­clud­ing a new am­mo­nia fa­cil­i­ty in Mex­i­co ex­pect­ed to come on­line next year, along­side its UAE methanol project.

Pol­i­cy ten­sions and long-term out­look

Pro­man has raised con­cerns about shift­ing gas al­lo­ca­tion pri­or­i­ties, par­tic­u­lar­ly what it views as a move away from a bal­anced ap­proach be­tween LNG and down­stream petro­chem­i­cals.

It said “We are con­cerned about the shift in gas al­lo­ca­tion from a bal­anced ap­proach to one that favours LNG.”
The com­pa­ny ar­gued that down­stream in­dus­tries con­tribute sig­nif­i­cant na­tion­al val­ue through em­ploy­ment, lo­cal con­tent spend­ing, and broad­er eco­nom­ic mul­ti­pli­ers.

It al­so main­tained that T&T’s po­si­tion as the world’s sec­ond-largest methanol ex­porter rep­re­sents a strate­gic ad­van­tage that re­quires sus­tained pro­tec­tion.

At the same time, Pro­man stressed that its abil­i­ty to max­imise pro­duc­tion lo­cal­ly de­pends on a re­li­able and com­pet­i­tive­ly priced gas sup­ply.
As glob­al methanol de­mand con­tin­ues to grow, par­tic­u­lar­ly in clean­er fu­el ap­pli­ca­tions, T&T’s in­dus­tri­al base is fac­ing in­creas­ing pres­sure from both do­mes­tic pol­i­cy de­ci­sions and in­ter­na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tion.