In Jan­u­ary, the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny con­firmed its pres­i­dent for eight years, Mark Lo­quan would be step­ping down at the end of his con­tract.

It would lat­er be re­vealed that Lo­quan had been di­ag­nosed with brain can­cer, and be­gan seek­ing treat­ment over the course of the end.

Lo­quan of­fi­cial­ly left the NGC at the end of Au­gust and less than a month lat­er would re­ceive the Or­der of the Re­pub­lic of T&T for na­tion­al ser­vice in en­er­gy and steel­pan in­no­va­tion.

Up to the time of writ­ing, Lo­quan’s suc­ces­sor as NGC pres­i­dent has not been con­firmed.

Ed­mund Sub­yran, whose sub­stan­tive po­si­tion is vice pres­i­dent, le­gal and cor­po­rate af­fairs at the com­pa­ny, is act­ing as pres­i­dent of NGC.

That news would be start of a year of up and downs for the NGC, as it end­ed with the com­pa­ny be­ing de­fend­ed pub­licly by En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young af­ter the com­pa­ny record­ed a $1.3 bil­lion loss for 2023. How­ev­er Young and sev­er­al oth­er com­men­ta­tors not­ed this loss was not due to the per­for­mance of the com­pa­ny di­rect­ly but rather NGC’s good­will im­pair­ment which is val­ued at $1.8 bil­lion and is re­lat­ed to two in­vest­ments: the ac­qui­si­tion of Cono­coPhillips’s shares in Phoenix Park Gas Proces­sors Ltd (PPG­PL and its in­vest­ment in Caribbean Gas Chem­i­cals Ltd (CG­CL).

The deals were signed al­most a decade ago. How­ev­er fore­cast­ers be­lieve the NGC will re­bound in 2024, as it had done af­ter a his­toric loss of $2.1 bil­lion in 2020 when the com­pa­ny achieved an af­ter-tax prof­it of $2.6 bil­lion in 2021.

The NGC team would have been buoyed by the news that the Unit­ed States Of­fice of For­eign As­sets Con­trol (OFAC) grant­ed T&T a li­cence to op­er­ate in the Cocuina-Man­akin field in May. Young con­firmed that the li­cence terms were sim­i­lar to the OFAC per­mis­sion grant­ed for the Drag­on Gas field.

The Cocuina-Man­akin strad­dles the bor­ders of both T&T and Venezuela, In Ju­ly, a deal was fi­nalised with Venezuela al­low­ing NGC Ex­plo­ration and Pro­duc­tion Lim­it­ed to be­gin work in the cross bor­der field.

Al­so in Ju­ly, Shell T&T Ltd an­nounced it has tak­en fi­nal in­vest­ment de­ci­sion (FID) on the Man­a­tee project, an un­de­vel­oped gas field in the East Coast Ma­rine Area (EC­MA).

While an­nounc­ing the news, Shell ex­plained Man­a­tee will al­low Shell to com­pet­i­tive­ly grow its in­te­grat­ed gas busi­ness by build­ing on de­vel­op­ment ef­forts in the EC­MA, one of the coun­try’s most pro­lif­ic gas-pro­duc­ing ar­eas.

Man­a­tee has been iden­ti­fied as one of the most promis­ing gas fields on the hori­zon for the lo­cal en­er­gy Sec­tor, with En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young stat­ing in De­cem­ber be­fore Par­lia­ment he ex­pect­ed first gas from the field in 2026.

The re­struc­tur­ing of At­lantic of­fi­cial­ly took ef­fect in Oc­to­ber, the very same month Vin­cent Pereira was an­nounced as the chair­man of the Point Fortin-based LNG pro­duc­er.

The en­er­gy sec­tor land­scape en­dured a mi­nor saga for half of 2024 af­ter Touch­stone Ex­plo­ration ini­tial­ly an­nounced a takeover of Trin­i­ty Ex­plo­ration & Pro­duc­tion plc on the terms of an all-share ac­qui­si­tion in May. How­ev­er in Sep­tem­ber, Touch­stone opt­ed out of the deal, clear­ing the way for Lease Op­er­a­tors Ltd to ac­quire the com­pa­ny.

Touch­stone how­ev­er would do busi­ness with Shell, pur­chas­ing Shell Trinidad Cen­tral Block Ltd (STCBL) from BG Over­seas Hold­ings for US$23 mil­lion in cash, pend­ing reg­u­la­to­ry ap­proval. That deal is ex­pect­ed to fi­nalised in ear­ly 2025.

For the pe­ri­od Jan­u­ary to Sep­tem­ber 2024, T&T’s to­tal crude oil and con­den­sate pro­duc­tion in­creased by 6.37 per cent to 54,154 from 50,909 bar­rel of oil per day, ac­cord­ing to in­for­ma­tion on the Min­istry of En­er­gy web­site.

To­tal nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion in Sep­tem­ber 2024 amount­ed to an av­er­age of 2.49 bil­lion cu­bic feet per day, which was 1.88 per cent less than the 2.54 bil­lion cu­bic feet put in Jan­u­ary, ac­cord­ing to the web­site.

M&A trans­ac­tions

In ma­jor busi­ness deals out­side of the en­er­gy sec­tor, the Agos­ti­ni’s group, which is chaired by Chris­t­ian Mout­tet, made a cou­ple sig­nif­i­cant ac­qui­si­tions in the lo­cal mar­ket.

In April, Presto, a mem­ber of the pub­licly list­ed Agos­ti­ni’s group, an­nounced the ac­qui­si­tion of the 14 re­tail lo­ca­tions of Lin­da’s Bak­ery.

The deal meant that Lin­da’s non-re­tail as­sets, which in­clude its man­u­fac­tur­ing plant lo­cat­ed at El So­cor­ro, and its dis­tri­b­u­tion seg­ment, still be­long to the share­hold­ers of the Trot­ters Group, Mout­tet Cap­i­tal and Bagel­ry Ltd

How­ev­er, an­oth­er Agos­ti­ni’s com­pa­ny Su­per­Pharm, bought Massy Stores’ in house phar­ma­cy as­sets in Au­gust.

Massy said then de­ci­sion to sell its 10 in-store phar­ma­cy as­sets to Su­per­Pharm Ltd will be a “good deal for both sides”. The in house phar­ma­cies lo­cat­ed at Massy stores have since been re­brand­ed to M Phar­ma­cy.

In June, Agos­ti­ni’s com­plet­ed the ac­qui­si­tions of Aven­ta (Cu­raçao), Aven­ta Aru­ba NV and Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal Ware­hous­ing In­cor­po­rat­ed

(Cu­raçao), three phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal and per­son­al care dis­tri­b­u­tion com­pa­nies in the Dutch Caribbean.

For its fi­nan­cial year end­ed Sep­tem­ber 30, 2024, Agos­ti­ni’s rev­enue in­creased by 8.7 per cent to $5.09 bil­lion. The group’s af­ter-tax prof­it was down by 11.3 per cent to $323.44 mil­lion

But the biggest ac­qui­si­tion made by a T&T com­pa­ny in 2024 was ANSA McAL’s US$327 mil­lion ac­qui­si­tion of 100 per cent of Bleachtech, a com­pa­ny based in Cleve­land, Ohio that op­er­ates two chlor-al­ka­li plants in that state and in Vir­ginia. Bleachtech is a prof­itable pro­duc­er of high pu­ri­ty bleach, hy­drochlo­ric acid and caus­tic so­da.

“Through su­pe­ri­or en­gi­neer­ing ex­per­tise, a unique man­u­fac­tur­ing process and strong cus­tomer ser­vice, Bleachtech has be­come the low-cost bleach pro­duc­er of choice in the Mid­west and Mid-At­lantic re­gions,” ac­cord­ing to a ANSA McAL news re­lease.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, ANSA McAL CEO, An­tho­ny Sab­ga III de­scribed the ac­qui­si­tion, as “huge­ly trans­for­ma­tion­al” for the com­pa­ny and a “com­ing of age and a ma­tu­ri­ty” for the group and ANSA Chem­i­cals, which serves most of the mu­nic­i­pal wa­ter needs of the en­tire re­gion.

He de­scribed the ac­qui­si­tion as an im­por­tant step in the group achiev­ing its 2X growth strat­e­gy to be­come a $2 bil­lion prof­it be­fore tax com­pa­ny by 2027. The group’s prof­it be­fore tax for 2023 was $841.84 mil­lion.

“We have well pub­li­cised our goal to dou­ble the size, scale and im­pact of the group by 2027. This ac­qui­si­tion will add a sub­stan­tial­ly in­cre­men­tal com­po­nent to our busi­ness. This al­lows us to now, for all in­tent and pur­pos­es, to be the main sup­pli­er of chlor-al­ka­li treat­ment for two ma­jor states in the Unit­ed States. So it most cer­tain­ly un­der­pins the agen­da and the ob­jec­tive of get­ting to, and po­ten­tial­ly sur­pass­ing, 2x,”said Sab­ga.

He added that if the 2X goal is es­sen­tial­ly an in­cre­men­tal $1 bil­lion in prof­it, the group es­ti­mates that the ac­qui­si­tion of Bleachtech is go­ing to add be­tween $240 mil­lion to $260 mil­lion in prof­it be­fore tax, which is about a 25 per cent in­cre­ment on earn­ings.

The prospects of the ac­qui­si­tion’s con­tri­bu­tion to the 2X goal is al­so based on what ANSA McAL paid for Bleachtech and how the trans­ac­tion was fi­nanced.

Sab­ga said,”The ac­qui­si­tion price was based on a mul­ti­ple of EBIT­DA (earn­ings be­fore in­ter­est, tax­es, de­pre­ci­a­tion, and amor­ti­sa­tion) that we be­lieve re­flect­ed fair val­ue for the busi­ness, based on: i) how sim­i­lar, pub­licly trad­ed busi­ness are val­ued by the mar­ket; ii) his­tor­i­cal­ly, what busi­ness­es of this na­ture were pur­chased for and, iii) the find­ings with­in our due dili­gence process.

He dis­closed that Bleachtech’s 2023 rev­enues to­talled US$85.7 mil­lion and its EBIT­DA last year amount­ed to US$57.4 mil­lion, which Jef­fers de­scribed as “a very, very strong EBIT­DA mar­gin.” The EBIT­DA mar­gin is EBIT­DA/rev­enue, which means Bleachtech’s EBIT­DA mar­gin in 2023 was 67 per cent. That mar­gin was achieved, even though the com­pa­ny op­er­at­ed at 50 per cent ca­pac­i­ty.