An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

Phoenix Park Gas Proces­sors Ltd (PPG­PL) is not pro­ject­ing fur­ther loss­es in its fi­nan­cials in 2025.

This was re­vealed by PPG­PL’s pres­i­dent Do­minic Ram­per­sad dur­ing a one-on-one in­ter­view with the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian.  

He said the nat­ur­al gas liq­uids com­pa­ny is pro­ject­ing a flat per­for­mance for this year, as it un­der­stands the out­look for its prod­ucts, which are propane, bu­tane and and nat­ur­al gaso­lene.  

“What we are see­ing is as we go fur­ther out in time, and the Prime Min­is­ter and En­er­gy Min­is­ter have said it, as the Lo­ran/Man­a­tee gas field starts com­ing on stream, we are go­ing to see a pick­up in some of it. But I think for the next two years, PPG­PL will be pret­ty much sta­ble.  We will not be at a loss,” Ram­per­sad as­sured.

The com­pa­ny is split in­to three ma­jor parts, Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny Nat­ur­al Gas Liq­uids, which owns 51 per cent, TT NGL, which owns 39 per cent and Pan West En­gi­neers and Con­struc­tors LLC, which has a ten-per-cent share.

For the nine months end­ed Sep­tem­ber 30, 2024, TT NGL post­ed an af­ter-tax prof­it of $82.8 mil­lion, which was a 153 per cent in­crease com­pared to the $32.7 mil­lion.

At a news con­fer­ence on De­cem­ber 12, 2024, NGC chair­man Dr Joseph Ish­mael Khan said the com­pa­ny record­ed a $1.3 bil­lion af­ter-tax loss for 2023 and this re­flect­ed the im­pact of a sharp re­duc­tion in in­ter­na­tion­al en­er­gy com­mod­i­ty prices, and a one-time, non-cash im­pair­ment of $1.5 bil­lion for good­will.

Good­will is the dif­fer­ence be­tween the pur­chase price of an as­set and the fair mar­ket val­ue of the tar­get com­pa­ny’s as­sets.

In ex­plain­ing the good­will im­pair­ment, NGC ex­ec­u­tives at the news con­fer­ence said in 2013, the com­pa­ny paid US en­er­gy gi­ant Cono­coPhillips $3.8 bil­lion (US$600 mil­lion) to ac­quire the US en­er­gy com­pa­ny’s 39 per cent stake in PPG­PL.

NGC said it record­ed good­will of $2.3 bil­lion on the ac­qui­si­tion of the 39 per cent stake, which sug­gests that the fair val­ue of PPG­PL’s as­sets in 2013 was $1.5 bil­lion.

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young at an­oth­er news con­fer­ence last year made it clear that the cur­rent chair­man and the board of NGC were not to be blamed for the re­cent bil­lion-dol­lar loss in­curred by the state-owned com­pa­ny.

This af­ter UNC MP David Lee said the pub­lic should keep an eye on the NGC chair­man af­ter the com­pa­ny re­port­ed the bil­lion-dol­lar loss for the fi­nan­cial year 2023 and not­ed it had sim­i­lar­ly re­port­ed a loss in 2021.

“You have the com­par­a­tive ac­counts for the first nine months of 2024 for NGC, where they have de­clared just un­der a bil­lion dol­lars was made, in prof­it af­ter tax. The NGC group has con­tin­ued to pay all of its tax­es,” said Young, who added that the Gov­ern­ment and NGC have been work­ing to en­sure that the com­pa­ny can con­tin­ue to gen­er­ate rev­enues and prof­its in the long run.

Up­grades

The PPG­PL pres­i­dent in­di­cat­ed that the gas com­pa­ny is do­ing up­grades to its plant at a cost be­tween US$7-8 mil­lion dol­lars.

He said the plant, which is lo­cat­ed at Rio Grande Dri­ve on the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate in Cou­va, is po­si­tion­ing it­self for cross-bor­der gas.

Ram­per­sad said PPG­PL’s just fin­ished the 33 per cent ex­pan­sion of its ter­mi­nal in Hous­ton cost­ing US$10 mil­lion.

“We fin­ished that ex­pan­sion in Oc­to­ber and right now, be­cause of the cold win­ter they are hav­ing, that ex­pan­sion is full.  It might be full in win­ter, some of it tends to go back down.”

Giv­ing fur­ther in­sight in­to the Hous­ton ex­pan­sion, he said that the project was con­cep­tu­alised in De­cem­ber 2023, and it was com­mis­sioned Oc­to­ber 2024.

Ram­per­sad high­light­ed that the nine months from con­cep­tu­al­i­sa­tion to com­mis­sion­ing shows the agili­ty that PPG­PL has learned.

He not­ed the gas com­pa­ny has two oth­er ex­pan­sions planned for its North Amer­i­can busi­ness for this year, which he hopes to get a fi­nal in­vest­ment de­ci­sion (FID) on soon.

With the PPG­PL be­ing deep in the red on the fi­nan­cial books in the past, Ram­per­sad is con­fi­dent the com­pa­ny is mov­ing close to breakeven now for this year.  

“The two projects we have to get the FID will take us in­to the black.”

Trump en­er­gy poli­cies `

Ex­plain­ing ex­pand­ed on his state­ment at Am­cham T&T’s Eco­nom­ic Out­look last Wednes­day that the pub­lic should not be afraid of the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion.

He said, “Do not be afraid of Pres­i­dent Trump’s poli­cies be­cause his en­er­gy poli­cies pro­vide tremen­dous op­por­tu­ni­ties for Trinidad and To­ba­go and are not just en­er­gy re­lat­ed.”

Ram­per­sad said last week he was in Texas and met with a se­nior ex­ec­u­tive of one of the largest oil and gas com­pa­nies in the world, who asked what Pres­i­dent Trump’s com­ments about “Drill ba­by Drill” meant.

The ex­ec­u­tive said, “It means that the US can get the oil out of the ground but the in­fra­struc­ture and the ser­vices to get it from the well­head to mar­ket is where the chal­lenge lies.”

The PPG­PL pres­i­dent said that is where the op­por­tu­ni­ty lies for this coun­try.

“We do not have to be a bil­lion-dol­lar in­vestor to in­vest in those things, but if you cre­ate a niche for your­self there is op­por­tu­ni­ty in T&T with our bor­der and cross-bor­der gas with the US, Guyana and Suri­name. Every­thing is right here, but for us to be able to ac­cess it, we need to re­cal­i­brate.”

Giv­ing an ex­am­ple, Ram­per­sad said the com­pa­ny used to mar­ket about 6,000 to 7,000 bar­rels per day of propane and more re­cent­ly, it is mar­ket­ing 25,000 bar­rels per day.

“In the space of four years, we’ve grown our mar­ket­ing. Now, we are mak­ing mon­ey here be­cause we do not have a lot of fixed costs to car­ry. We’re get­ting there. I think this is the area where the op­por­tu­ni­ty for Trinidad and To­ba­go is.  Some­times you look at it and say, well, that’s too big for us. No, there’s space for every­body,” he em­pha­sised.  

There have been grow­ing con­cerns by the busi­ness sec­tor and en­er­gy ex­perts that the new Don­ald Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion can mean that sanc­tions can be main­tained or in­ten­si­fied against Venezuela. That, in turn, can have a neg­a­tive im­pact on that coun­try’s re­la­tion­ship with T&T over the Drag­on Gas deal.

Asked to com­ment on this con­cern Ram­per­sad said “Yes, it’s a risk, but I have con­fi­dence, and I’m not a politi­cian, but I have con­fi­dence in my line min­is­ter Stu­art Young that dis­cus­sions will take place around that. A lot of the is­sues around Drag­on Gas are around en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty in this re­gion, which I think is part of Pres­i­dent Trump’s man­date.  I don’t think we’re speak­ing dif­fer­ent lan­guages.  It’s re­al­ly how we po­si­tion our­selves as a coun­try and demon­strate our role with re­gard to en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty in this re­gion.”