Whol­ly state-owned Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) said yes­ter­day it has ex­pand­ed its up­stream port­fo­lio with the ac­qui­si­tion of share­hold­ings in sev­er­al up­stream gas as­sets from Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny.

The ac­qui­si­tions deep­ened its pres­ence and par­tic­i­pa­tion along the lo­cal nat­ur­al gas val­ue chain, NGC said.

Fol­low­ing the ex­e­cu­tion of a sales and pur­chase agree­ment in Ju­ly 2021, NGC E&P In­vest­ments, a whol­ly owned sub­sidiary of NGC, com­plet­ed the ac­qui­si­tion of Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny’s par­tic­i­pat­ing in­ter­est in the off­shore blocks NC­MA 4 (20 per cent), Block 22 (10 per cent) and Block 9 (100 per cent), which are in Trinidad’s North Coast Ma­rine Area (NC­MA).

It al­so ac­quired Her­itage’s 19.5 per cent share­hold­ing in Point Fortin LNG Ex­ports (PFLE).

Gas is sold to NGC for the do­mes­tic mar­ket and to PFLE for the LNG ex­port mar­ket.

This col­lec­tive ac­qui­si­tion will en­able NGC to col­lab­o­rate more close­ly with its joint ven­ture part­ners along the nat­ur­al gas val­ue chain and po­si­tions the com­pa­ny for strate­gic growth from any fu­ture up­stream de­vel­op­ment in the vicin­i­ty of these blocks.

It al­so strength­ens NGC’s stake in the LNG busi­ness and al­lows the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go to main­tain its par­tic­i­pat­ing in­ter­est in strate­gic gas in­fra­struc­ture in the NC­MA.

Com­ment­ing on the ac­qui­si­tion, NGC Pres­i­dent Mark Lo­quan ex­plained: “NGC is in­tent on be­com­ing an in­te­grat­ed glob­al en­er­gy play­er, with a di­verse port­fo­lio of as­sets and in­vest­ments.

“As this ac­qui­si­tion at­tests, ex­pan­sion for us does not just mean ven­tur­ing in­to new busi­ness ter­ri­to­ry such as the clean en­er­gy space, but al­so strength­en­ing our core.

“Nat­ur­al gas and LNG have an im­por­tant role to play as low-car­bon fu­els of the fu­ture, and if we are se­ri­ous about sup­port­ing the clean en­er­gy tran­si­tion, we must con­tin­ue to build our gas-based busi­ness and as­set base.

“We are op­ti­mistic that this ac­qui­si­tion will bol­ster our prof­itabil­i­ty and mul­ti­ply the val­ue we can add to the econ­o­my and the do­mes­tic and LNG en­er­gy sec­tor,” do­mes­tic and LNG en­er­gy sec­tor.”