The Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) has signed an en­gi­neer­ing, pro­cure­ment, and com­mis­sion­ing (EPC) con­tract for gas in­fra­struc­ture for e TecK’s Phoenix Park In­dus­tri­al Es­tate (PPIE), with the Bei­jing Con­struc­tion En­gi­neer­ing Group Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (BCEG). BCEG, a Chi­nese con­struc­tion and en­gi­neer­ing firm, is the de­sign-build con­trac­tor for PPIE.

PPIE, a Gov­ern­ment ini­tia­tive led by the Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try, is a state-of-the-art light in­dus­tri­al es­tate that is be­ing de­vel­oped to stim­u­late eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment and fur­ther di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion ef­forts.

The 145-acre park is be­ing built by land­lord Evolv­ing Tec­Knolo­gies and En­ter­prise De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd (e TecK) through its con­trac­tor, BCEG.

In a state­ment NGC said the EPC con­tract sign­ing, which took place on Jan­u­ary 18, 2021, of­fers NGC an al­ter­nate av­enue to achieve its strate­gic goals.

“NGC, with its wealth of ex­pe­ri­ence in pipeline in­fra­struc­ture con­struc­tion and the sole sup­pli­er of nat­ur­al gas in the lo­cal en­er­gy sec­tor, saw the project as a nat­ur­al fit with its ex­pand­ing busi­ness mod­el,” the state­ment added.

It not­ed that NGC’s in­volve­ment in this ini­tia­tive au­gurs well for T&T as it in­creas­es lo­cal con­tent in the over­all project.

NGC said con­ser­v­a­tive es­ti­mates by Gov­ern­ment re­vealed that some 1,000 peo­ple are ex­pect­ed to be em­ployed dur­ing the con­struc­tion phase.

Once op­er­a­tional, the park will di­rect­ly em­ploy over 4,500 per­sons.

“As land­lord PPIE, e TecK is proud to have been the cat­a­lyst for the dis­cus­sions lead­ing to the sign­ing of the EPC con­tract be­tween NGC and BCEG.

“We see this as a sig­nif­i­cant al­liance to meet the de­mand and sup­ply of nat­ur­al gas to busi­ness­es that will be oc­cu­py­ing 45 of the 78 leasable land lots in the ar­eas of light and ad­vanced man­u­fac­tur­ing, as­sem­bly, lo­gis­tics and dis­tri­b­u­tion and in­for­ma­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tion tech­nol­o­gy (ICT) in­dus­tries,” Steve De Las, Pres­i­dent, e TecK said.

Caribbean Re­gion­al Gen­er­al Man­ag­er of BCEG, Ma Shu­long added that the com­pa­ny is proud to be a part of this project to help stim­u­late the eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment with­in this coun­try.

“Our em­ploy­ees, both lo­cal and Chi­nese, are ful­ly ded­i­cat­ed to hav­ing this project com­plet­ed on time. The al­liances be­tween the two coun­tries have grown stronger and we look for­ward to work­ing with our part­ners in the fu­ture,” he not­ed.

NGC Pres­i­dent Mark Lo­quan said his com­pa­ny con­tin­ues to play an im­por­tant role in rev­o­lu­tion­is­ing the lo­cal econ­o­my.

The PPIE is still in the con­struc­tion phase, with a pro­ject­ed com­ple­tion date of De­cem­ber 2021.