JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Friday, February 21, 2025

NGC signs gas supply

contract with MHTL

by

482 days ago
20231028
President of the National Gas Company of T&T (NGC) Mark Loquan, left, and managing director of Methanol Holdings (Trinidad) Ltd Jerome Dookie after signing the gas sales contract at NGC’s head office on the Point LIsas Industrial Estate on October 20.

President of the National Gas Company of T&T (NGC) Mark Loquan, left, and managing director of Methanol Holdings (Trinidad) Ltd Jerome Dookie after signing the gas sales contract at NGC’s head office on the Point LIsas Industrial Estate on October 20.

The Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) of T&T an­nounced yes­ter­day that it had com­plet­ed ne­go­ti­a­tions with the Swiss com­pa­ny Pro­man for the ex­e­cu­tion of a gas sales con­tract for Methanol Hold­ings (Trinidad) Ltd (MHTL).

The gas sales con­tract was signed at NGC’s head of­fice in Point Lisas on Oc­to­ber 20th, 2023 by NGC Pres­i­dent Mark Lo­quan and Jerome Dook­ie, Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor of MHTL, the lo­cal nat­ur­al gas ag­gre­ga­tor and mar­keter.

The agree­ment, which marked the cul­mi­na­tion of many months of ne­go­ti­a­tions, will add sta­bil­i­ty to T&T’s petro­chem­i­cal sec­tor, as it will gov­ern sup­ply to crit­i­cal methanol-pro­duc­ing fa­cil­i­ties on the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate (PLIE), NGC said in a news re­lease.

MHTL is a lead­ing play­er in the glob­al methanol in­dus­try that op­er­ates five plants, in­clud­ing the M5000 fa­cil­i­ty, which is con­sid­ered one of the largest stand-alone methanol plants in the world.

Com­ment­ing on the sign­ing of the gas sales con­tract, NGC pres­i­dent Mark Lo­quan said: “NGC has been work­ing tire­less­ly over the past months on down­stream gas sales agree­ments, and we are pleased to have brought this crit­i­cal con­tract ne­go­ti­a­tion to a suc­cess­ful close.

“In Pro­man and MHTL, we found pro­fes­sion­al and col­lab­o­ra­tive part­ners, as ded­i­cat­ed to a mu­tu­al­ly agree­able out­come as we have been. I want to com­mend all our teams for their un­wa­ver­ing com­mit­ment as we worked through this agree­ment, bear­ing cur­rent and prospec­tive in­dus­try con­di­tions in mind.

“We look for­ward to fur­ther strength­en­ing our re­la­tion­ship with the Pro­man fam­i­ly of com­pa­nies in the years to come, to build a stronger, more sus­tain­able petro­chem­i­cal in­dus­try for the fu­ture.”

Ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of Pro­man Trinidad, Claus Cron­berg­er said: “We are pleased to have signed the new gas sales con­tract with the NGC for our methanol fa­cil­i­ties in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“Our methanol plants on the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate, and the high­ly skilled team who op­er­ate them, are an im­por­tant part of Pro­man’s glob­al pro­duc­tion port­fo­lio and rep­re­sent a sig­nif­i­cant part of the lo­cal en­er­gy sec­tor.

“I would like to thank the NGC team in­volved in achiev­ing the suc­cess­ful con­clu­sion of this ne­go­ti­a­tion. We look for­ward to on­go­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion with our NGC part­ners and the Gov­ern­ment of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go as we es­tab­lish the path­way for methanol as a low­er-emis­sion fu­el of the fu­ture with a key role to play in the en­er­gy tran­si­tion.”

MHTL was es­tab­lished in 1999 by Cli­co, which was the ma­jor­i­ty share­hold­er with 56.53 per cent, and Pro­man which held 43.47 per cent.

Fol­low­ing the col­lapse of the CL Fi­nan­cial em­pire in 2009, the Gov­ern­ment ac­quired Cli­co’s stake in MHTL as part of its bailout of the in­sur­ance com­pa­ny and its par­ent, CL Fi­nan­cial.

That ac­tion was chal­lenged by Pro­man at the In­ter­na­tion­al Court of Ar­bi­tra­tion, which found that the Gov­ern­ment’s ac­tions amount­ed to op­pres­sion of the mi­nor­i­ty share­hold­er.

The In­ter­na­tion­al Court of Ar­bi­tra­tion di­rect­ed that the 56.53 per cent of MHTL should be sold to Pro­man sub­sidiary, Con­sol­i­dat­ed En­er­gy Ltd, for US$1.175 bil­lion.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored