The whol­ly state-owned Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny Group (NGC) yes­ter­day an­nounced an af­ter-tax prof­it of $2.38 bil­lion for the year end­ed De­cem­ber 31, 2022.

In the com­pa­ny's 2022 sum­ma­ry con­sol­i­dat­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments, which was re­leased yes­ter­day, NGC dis­closed that its 2022 prof­it re­turn was 5.2 per cent low­er than the $2.51 bil­lion af­ter-tax prof­it record­ed in 2021.

The nat­ur­al gas dis­tri­b­u­tion and sale com­pa­ny's rev­enue rose by 41.46 per cent to $33.39 bil­lion in 2022, com­pared to the $23.60 bil­lion NGC gen­er­at­ed in 2021.

NGC's prof­it be­fore tax in­creased by 6 per cent to $5.07 bil­lion in 2022, from $4.78 bil­lion in 2021.

Ac­cord­ing to the au­dit­ed fi­nan­cials, NGC paid $2.69 bil­lion in tax­es in 2022, which means it had a tax rate of over 53 per cent, com­pared with a rate of 47.62 per cent in 2021.

NGC Chair­man Dr. Joseph Ish­mael Khan ex­plained the NGC Group’s prof­itabil­i­ty was dri­ven by high en­er­gy com­mod­i­ty prices, which were boost­ed by the up­ward trend of mar­ket prices for am­mo­nia and nat­ur­al gas liq­uids (NGLs) in 2022.

He said that as an in­te­grat­ed en­er­gy com­pa­ny, the group was able to cap­ture val­ue across the nat­ur­al gas val­ue chain.

He ex­plained that on the up­stream side of the en­er­gy val­ue chain, the group's par­ent com­pa­ny NGC ad­vanced its growth strate­gies through the com­ple­tion of key gas sup­ply con­tract ne­go­ti­a­tions, in­clud­ing a mile­stone gas sup­ply con­tract (GSC) with bpTT. He added that the com­pa­ny worked col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly with Shell to progress the Man­a­tee project and a heads of agree­ment (HOA) was signed to com­mence joint mod­i­fi­ca­tion of NGC’s Beach­field Fa­cil­i­ty, to ac­com­mo­date gas from that field.

The state­ment high­light­ed the fact that NGC fo­cused on the down­stream to se­cure a sta­ble sup­ply of gas to the petro­chem­i­cal and man­u­fac­tur­ing in­dus­tri­al sec­tors.

"No­tably, a GSC was signed with lo­cal ce­ment man­u­fac­tur­er, Ce­mex Trinidad Ce­ment Ltd (Ce­mex TCL). NGC con­tin­ued to work along­side the GORTT and the oth­er share­hold­ers in At­lantic LNG - Shell and bpTT - to fur­ther ne­go­ti­a­tions on the re­struc­tur­ing of the com­mer­cial arrange­ment for the LNG fa­cil­i­ty," Khan said.

The group's sub­sidiaries were al­so praised as it was ex­plained that key mile­stones were achieved.

Khan said Phoenix Park Gas Proces­sors Ltd (PPG­PL) ac­quired two for­eign as­sets in 2022 - a new NGL ter­mi­nal in Hull, Texas and a propane ter­mi­nal lo­cat­ed in Rush City, Min­neso­ta. This ex­pand­ed the group’s pres­ence in North Amer­i­can mar­kets while Na­tion­al En­er­gy was ap­point­ed by the gov­ern­ment to lead Trinidad and To­ba­go’s ex­port pro­mo­tion of en­er­gy ser­vices, un­der the di­rec­tion of the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries.

He added, "NGC bol­stered its en­er­gy mar­ket­ing and trad­ing port­fo­lio through a signed agree­ment with Pro­man to take methanol car­goes from its MHTL fa­cil­i­ty in Point Lisas for in­ter­na­tion­al ex­port."

Khan al­so hailed the group's progress in terms of sus­tain­abil­i­ty and the Green Agen­da as in 2022, thanks to the mar­ket­ing ef­forts of NGC CNG, a to­tal of 17,536 Nat­ur­al Gas Ve­hi­cles (NGVs) were re­port­ed­ly op­er­at­ing on the na­tion’s roads.

"This meant the com­pa­ny achieved the tar­get set out in its found­ing man­date to sup­port the in­tro­duc­tion of 17,500 NGVs in­to the do­mes­tic mar­ket. Sales of CNG al­so in­creased by 25 per cemt over 2021, show­ing strong mar­ket growth," Khan said.