Keio Ka­to has been ap­point­ed as CEO of Caribbean Gas Chem­i­cal Ltd (CG­CL), ef­fec­tive June 1.

Ka­to will be re­spon­si­ble for run­ning the CG­CL methanol and di-methyl ether (DME) fa­cil­i­ty at La Brea.

In a news re­lease, the com­pa­ny said his ap­point­ment fol­lows the re­tire­ment of for­mer CEO, Pe­dro Arasa.

It said Arasa served as CEO since 2021 and saw the com­pa­ny through com­mis­sion­ing, the achieve­ment of com­mer­cial op­er­a­tions sta­tus, and more re­cent­ly, the at­tain­ment of 1 mil­lion met­ric tonnes of an­nu­al pro­duc­tion for two con­sec­u­tive years.

Masahiko Naito, chair­man of the CG­CL board said, “The board’s de­ci­sion to ap­point Mr. Ka­to to the po­si­tion of CEO demon­strates the com­pa­ny’s recog­ni­tion of his ex­ten­sive ex­pe­ri­ence in the sec­tor and his abil­i­ty to lead the com­pa­ny, at this junc­ture, through the next phase of its growth and de­vel­op­ment.”

The re­lease fur­ther stat­ed that the new CEO will be re­spon­si­ble for the stew­ard­ship of the joint ven­ture petro­chem­i­cal com­pa­ny, which com­pris­es both lo­cal and Japan­ese share­hold­ers.

“I look for­ward to work­ing with the man­age­ment and staff of CG­CL to de­liv­er ex­cep­tion­al val­ue to our share­hold­ers and stake­hold­ers both na­tion­al­ly and glob­al­ly,” Ka­to said.

Ka­to, is an en­gi­neer by trade, with a mas­ter's de­gree from the De­part­ment of Ap­plied Chem­istry, School of En­gi­neer­ing, at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Tokyo.

CG­CL said he comes to the com­pa­ny with a wealth of knowl­edge and ex­pe­ri­ence in the en­er­gy sec­tor, hav­ing worked at Mit­subishi Gas Chem­i­cal Com­pa­ny Inc. for the past 24 years, with 12 of those years at the ex­ec­u­tive man­age­ment lev­el.

CG­CL at­tained com­mer­cial op­er­a­tions sta­tus on De­cem­ber 18, 2020, and has been pro­duc­ing and ship­ping methanol since Sep­tem­ber 2020.

The Na­tion­al Gas com­pa­ny owns 20 per cent of CG­CL, while Massy Hold­ings owns 10 per cent. The ma­jor­i­ty share­hold­ers of CG­CL are three re­lat­ed Japan­ese com­pa­nies: Mit­subishi Gas Chem­i­cal Com­pa­ny(MGC); Mit­subishi Cor­po­ra­tion and Mit­subishi Heavy In­dus­tries.

In Ju­ly 2020, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young at a post-cab­i­net me­dia con­fer­ence said that NGC suf­fered a bil­lion-dol­lar loss part­ly be­cause of the ne­go­ti­a­tions of the nat­ur­al gas sup­ply con­tract for the DME plant in La Brea.  

That con­tract was ne­go­ti­at­ed by the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment.

“They en­tered the coun­try in­to a con­tract, fi­nalised it in 2015, that was com­plete­ly detri­men­tal to NGC and the coun­try. It was the on­ly con­tract that that ad­min­is­tra­tion, be­tween 2010 and 2015, en­tered in­to. That’s a record. No amount of danc­ing would change that fact,” he said.

Young said that in 2016, the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) gov­ern­ment rene­go­ti­at­ed the Mit­subishi/Massy Nat­ur­al Gas to Petro­chem­i­cals project, and the Caribbean Gas Chem­i­cals Ltd project (CG­CL).

 “Dur­ing the pe­ri­od 2010 to 2015, the trust po­si­tion with re­gards to the avail­abil­i­ty and sup­ply of nat­ur­al gas to the hy­dro­car­bon down­stream in­dus­try was not pro­vid­ed. That is a fact,” he said, adding that there were sev­er­al gas cur­tail­ment is­sues at that time.

“What you are see­ing is a lame at­tempt to de­fend what hap­pened dur­ing that tenure and to try to ob­fus­cate that facts are com­plete­ly un­true,” Young said.

He added that when the Gov­ern­ment changed hands in 2015, it had to deal with “bil­lions of dol­lars in claims” from the down­stream in­dus­try and ex­pired con­tracts be­tween them and NGC.