PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

The Na­tion­al En­er­gy Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (NEC) paid US$60 mil­lion in div­i­dends to its par­ent com­pa­ny, Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC), be­tween Sep­tem­ber 2025 and Jan­u­ary 2026.

This was re­vealed by Min­is­ter of En­er­gy Dr Roodal Mooni­lal in re­sponse to a ques­tion from Port-of-Spain North/St Ann’s West MP Stu­art Young in Par­lia­ment on Fri­day.

NEC is 100 per cent owned by NGC, which is 100 per cent owned by Cor­po­ra­tion Sole (Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo), who holds all prop­er­ty trans­ferred or vest­ed in trust for the State.

Mooni­lal said, “Yes, div­i­dends were paid by Na­tion­al En­er­gy Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go. Part two, the to­tal amount of div­i­dends that has been paid to date is US$60 mil­lion.”

The En­er­gy Min­is­ter said, “Div­i­dends were paid to NGC as fol­lows: US$30 mil­lion on Sep­tem­ber 23, 2025 and US$30 mil­lion on Jan­u­ary 16, 2026.”

The En­er­gy Min­is­ter con­firmed in Par­lia­ment that the cur­ren­cy used for the pay­ments was Unit­ed States dol­lars.

Sources told the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day that the US$60 mil­lion was be­ing held in re­serves by the NEC to fund the dredg­ing chan­nels at Point Lisas and La Brea and for oth­er in­fra­struc­ture and main­te­nance work.

How­ev­er, the Min­is­ter pro­vid­ed lit­tle de­tail in re­sponse to an­oth­er ques­tion posed to him by Young with re­gard to the NGC’s main­te­nance of the re­quired right of way around its gas pipelines across T&T.

In re­sponse to those ques­tions, Mooni­lal said, “The NGC has par­tial­ly main­tained the right-of-way since the con­clu­sion of con­tracts that were in place for veg­e­ta­tion con­trol.”

He added that there had been some re­assess­ment done con­cern­ing the main­te­nance, stat­ing, “NGC has tak­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­vis­it and re­vise the scope of works and risk as­sess­ment for this par­tic­u­lar ac­tiv­i­ty, giv­en the er­ro­neous risk cat­e­gori­sa­tion in the past, which re­quired ven­dors to be STOW cer­ti­fied. NGC is cur­rent­ly fi­nal­is­ing the strat­e­gy to re-en­gage the ser­vices with a fo­cus on ex­pand­ing the ven­dor lists to pro­vide op­por­tu­ni­ties for the com­mu­ni­ties in which our right-of-way tra­vers­es.”

How­ev­er, the Min­is­ter stat­ed the Op­po­si­tion MP would have to sub­mit ques­tions about spe­cif­ic con­tracts to get more de­tails about which com­pa­nies were cur­rent­ly re­spon­si­ble for the par­tial main­te­nance.