Cur­tis Williams

At­lantic LNG Train 1 is dead. It is as sim­ple as that. No amount of spin, no amount of stalling, no amount of at­tack­ing the me­dia and cit­i­zens, no amount of blam­ing the multi­na­tion­als, no amount of hand wring­ing will change that. The gas is sim­ply not there, will not be there any time soon and the corol­lary of all of that is the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny’s ill-fat­ed at­tempt to save Train 1 has failed and the mon­ey gone down the prover­bial drain.

On Sat­ur­day a for­lorn-look­ing Prime Min­is­ter, Dr Kei­th Christo­pher Row­ley held a news con­fer­ence up­on his re­turn from Glas­gow and ef­fec­tive­ly said what this col­umn and news­pa­per has re­port­ed for al­most a year, that Train 1 is ef­fec­tive­ly dead and all that is left to be done is the zip­ping up the prover­bial body bag.

He said; “It is not for the Gov­ern­ment to just walk out of a sit­u­a­tion on Train 1. Train 1 is in­te­gral­ly con­nect­ed to Trains 2, 3 and 4 and it’s not that we own the busi­ness, we are on­ly a ten per cent own­er but as a coun­try, we have a much larg­er in­ter­est than ten per cent so we would be the last per­son to walk away from the ta­ble on Train 1 but in the dis­cus­sions that we have been hav­ing, we as a Gov­ern­ment would have done and we con­tin­ue to give hope for the breath­ing of life in­to Train 1 un­til the doc­tor says it’s dead.”

Row­ley con­tin­ued; “I think the doc­tor is putting on his coat right now and we had the kind of dis­cus­sions where, with BP and Shell, par­tic­u­lar­ly with BP, the largest gas pro­duc­er, where, … ini­tial­ly we re­lied, Gov­ern­ment re­lied, when we ex­tend­ed the life of Train 1 for five years and BP was en­gaged in an in­field drilling pro­gramme, we an­tic­i­pat­ed a pos­i­tive out-turn. As fate would have it, BP drilled a num­ber of dry holes and had to, in the end, con­firm that we don’t have the gas for Train 1.”

The Prime Min­is­ter said as a 10 per cent share­hold­er in the Train 1 project, T&T had to spend some mon­ey to keep its op­tions open but now the dis­cus­sion was more about how to sal­vage the projects go­ing for­ward.

“We spent, I think it is about US$33 mil­lion to keep the Train 1 op­tion open, not on­ly for ne­go­ti­a­tion pur­pos­es but al­so for the pos­si­bil­i­ty that if gas was avail­able that we would con­tin­ue. I think we can now con­clude that the gas is not there be­cause BP has not been suc­cess­ful,” the PM said.

“What we dis­cussed is what BP is go­ing to do go­ing for­ward in terms of in­vest­ing and again keep con­tin­u­ing to try to find more gas in the Colum­bus Basin and else­where. ... so that be­ing so, the share­hold­ers of Train 1 now have and we have agreed that by the end of the first quar­ter of 2022, we will take a de­fin­i­tive de­ci­sion on how we to­geth­er do what has to be done about Train 1 and at­tempt to con­clude the re­struc­tur­ing of Trains 2, 3 and 4 where all the share­hold­ers will have their in­ter­est well served in a re­struc­tured arrange­ment of the 2, 3 and 4 trains. So that is well un­der­way and that was part of our dis­cus­sions.”

It was in De­cem­ber last year that the Busi­ness Guardian broke the un­for­tu­nate news to the coun­try that Train 1 would have to be shut down come Jan­u­ary 2021.

The sto­ry was im­me­di­ate­ly seized up­on by the Op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress and it raised the is­sue in the Par­lia­ment.

From De­cem­ber 4, un­til last Sun­day the gov­ern­ment has tried to spin to the pop­u­la­tion that the Guardian’s re­port­ing was false and mis­lead­ing.

The for­mer En­er­gy Min­is­ter, the late Franklin Khan led the charge telling the Par­lia­ment that the sto­ry was in­ac­cu­rate and Train 1 will be run­ning all of 2021. His­to­ry will show this was sim­ply not ac­cu­rate.

Khan told the Par­lia­ment; “Madam Speak­er At­lantic Train One will not be shut­ting down in Jan­u­ary 2021. Train One will con­tin­ue to op­er­ate in 2021 and will be part of wider ne­go­ti­a­tions which have been tak­ing place among the At­lantic LNG share­hold­ers to form one uni­tised fa­cil­i­ty en­com­pass­ing all four trains.”

It must be un­der­stood that while Khan was say­ing Train 1 would be saved at the same time the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny was com­mit­ting it­self to pay for the turn­around of the plant, and its main­te­nance for 2021 which, if it had kept to its con­tract, would have added up to well over $400 mil­lion. The Prime Min­is­ter ap­peared pleased that the loss of a quar­ter bil­lion dol­lars was a rea­son­able gam­ble.

Based on doc­u­ments the Busi­ness Guardian has we have con­firmed that the gov­ern­ment knew on De­cem­ber 3, 2020 that there would be no gas for Train 1 as the coun­try’s largest nat­ur­al gas sup­pli­er and the on­ly sup­pli­er to Train 1, bpTT wrote to the NGC ad­vis­ing the state-owned com­pa­ny that it (bpTT) would not be de­liv­er­ing its full dai­ly con­tract­ed quan­ti­ties (DCQ) for con­tract year 2021. bpTT fur­ther ad­vised NGC in that very De­cem­ber 3, 2020 email, that NGC should take this in­to con­sid­er­a­tion be­fore mak­ing any de­ci­sion to in­vest in Train 1.

NGC—led by its pres­i­dent Mark Lo­quan—was con­vinced that it could pro­cure the re­quired gas for Train 1 and ad­vised the Board and the Kei­th Row­ley gov­ern­ment to pur­sue the uni­lat­er­al fund­ing of the Train 1 Turn­around (up­grade) and to fund the main­te­nance of the Train 1 op­er­a­tions.

New doc­u­ments pro­vid­ed to the Busi­ness Guardian con­firm Lo­quan and Ver­li­er Quan Vie, the NGC’s Vice Pres­i­dent Com­mer­cial, led the charge in the move by NGC to take ad­van­tage of the fact that Yara, Trin­gen and MHTL were all in ac­tive and ad­vanced ne­go­ti­a­tions with NGC around De­cem­ber 2020. Due to COVID and the ef­fects on methanol and am­mo­nia prices, a cou­ple of the plants at Point Lisas al­so in­voked the “eco­nom­ic shut­down” op­tion clause in their con­tracts which al­lowed them to uni­lat­er­al­ly shut­down their plants for spe­cif­ic pe­ri­ods of time with­out any li­a­bil­i­ty once methanol and am­mo­nia prices dropped be­low a cer­tain thresh­old. The “eco­nom­ic shut­down” op­tion proved it­self risky and not well thought out by Lo­quan and Quan Vie be­cause while down­stream plants can in­voke it uni­lat­er­al­ly, once the pric­ing thresh­old is reached, NGC had no cov­er­age against this in its up­stream con­tracts. In oth­er words, NGC could not in­voke “eco­nom­ic shut­down” in any of its up­stream con­tracts but still of­fered this op­tion to many of its down­stream cus­tomers.

Un­der the failed plan, the gas would be “freed up” as it ap­peared that the Yara plant, the Trin­gen 1 plant and one of the then four op­er­at­ing MHTL methanol plants would con­tin­ue and that methanol and am­mo­nia prices would re­main de­pressed for most of 2021 and there­fore the plants that were in­volved “eco­nom­ic shut­down” would re­main closed for all or most of 2021. They al­so as­sumed that the Methanex plant which was down, as they could not agree on a gas price in the re­new­al dis­cus­sions with NGC, would re­main down be­cause the NGC had no plan to of­fer a bet­ter price to Methanex for the gas need­ed by Ti­tan and Methanex was not pre­pared to budge on the is­sue. Even amidst high methanol prices, Ti­tan re­mains closed.

The NGC’s chair­man Con­rad Enill ad­mit­ted as much dur­ing an in­ter­view on I95.5fm when he ex­plained what the sit­u­a­tion was like in De­cem­ber 2020.

“We looked at the sit­u­a­tion where we had gas, do­mes­tic gas, and yes Cur­tis is cor­rect, BP wrote us and said to us, lis­ten we have some short­ages, we think it is go­ing to be about a month or so, we un­der­stood that was nor­mal and we could deal with that. So we were work­ing on the ba­sis that we had gas, and we had no tak­ers. We had planned a Train 1 main­te­nance of which the NGC would pay some por­tion be­cause we are part own­ers in Train 1,” Enill re­vealed.

He added, “At­lantic came to us and said, we need you to make a de­ci­sion be­cause by Jan­u­ary 12th, 2021 if you do not com­mit to the main­te­nance on this plant, the next op­por­tu­ni­ty that you have is in a No­vem­ber of 2021, be­cause im­me­di­ate­ly, as soon as your plant is main­tained, we have to do shut­downs on two and then three in the nor­mal course of things......

“We found our­selves in a sit­u­a­tion there­fore where, NGC took the de­ci­sion that we are go­ing to sup­port the main­te­nance of the plant al­though the oth­ers (bpTT, Shell, the Chi­nese in­vestors) de­cid­ed that they were not go­ing to so do, be­cause we un­der­stood that we had gas that was avail­able for do­mes­tic (use) which we were ne­go­ti­at­ing, which if it had been con­vert­ed to LNG would have at least giv­en us some rev­enue. That was in De­cem­ber.

Yet the gov­ern­ment up to the Bud­get de­bate last month still tried to spin the is­sue and pre­tend the ne­go­ti­a­tions were live and too com­plex for or­di­nary cit­i­zens to un­der­stand.

Over the last year, the Busi­ness Guardian has kept faith with its read­ers and re­port­ed fac­tu­al­ly and with deep analy­sis on the sit­u­a­tion.

For re­port­ing on this ma­jor pub­lic in­ter­est is­sue and bring­ing the facts in­to the pub­lic do­main, which is the essence of jour­nal­ism, I have been at­tacked by the Prime Min­is­ter, the Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and their prox­ies.

All have at­tempt­ed to rub­bish the re­ports while stout­ly de­fend­ing the NGC and, more specif­i­cal­ly, its pres­i­dent.

Cu­ri­ous­ly, in per­form­ing the me­dia’s role as watch­dog, I have not on­ly been vil­i­fied by a gov­ern­ment that shows no ap­petite for hold­ing the NGC to ac­count but by in­di­vid­u­als trad­ing on their past in the pro­fes­sion of jour­nal­ism or as En­er­gy Ex­perts who were pre­pared to ig­nore the truth.

I re­al­ly wish it did not come to this. I wish our lead­ers had made bet­ter de­ci­sions be­cause I know Aria, Che, Nathaniel, Makela, and Ka­lyise are count­ing on our lead­ers to do bet­ter and those of us en­trust­ed with the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the fourth es­tate to speak truth to pow­er and hold peo­ple to ac­count.

It’s time the spin comes to an end.