BPTT is deny­ing that there is any link be­tween the sale of its in­ter­est in At­las Methanol Com­pa­ny and the its in­abil­i­ty to sup­ply the plant with all its re­quired gas, as it has done since At­las start­up in 2004.

The plant us­es 165 mil­lion stan­dard cu­bic feet of nat­ur­al gas per day (mm­scf/d) and even dur­ing the nat­ur­al gas cur­tail­ment all At­las re­quire­ments were met. At the time bpTT was a share­hold­er and pro­vid­ed all the gas the At­las plant need­ed.

How­ev­er ef­fec­tive Jan­u­ary 1, 2021, bpTT is no longer a share­hold­er in At­las and as of Jan­u­ary 1, 2021 bpTT has in­di­cat­ed that it on­ly has gas to meet 80 per cent of the plant’s de­mand.

“This time the NGC can­not be fault­ed for what is hap­pen­ing. The fact is from the start of this arrange­ment, more than 15 years ago, At­las would in­di­cate to the NGC on a month­ly ba­sis how much gas it re­quired and that in­for­ma­tion is then passed on­to bpTT which would al­lo­cate the tranche of gas specif­i­cal­ly for At­las,” an NGC source told the Busi­ness Guardian.

How­ev­er to the NGC’s sur­prise, when At­las in­di­cat­ed that it was go­ing to need 165 mm­scf/d for Jan­u­ary and the fig­ure passed on­to bpTT, the NGC was in­formed that bpTT will on­ly be able to sup­ply 132 mm­scf/d.

The Busi­ness Guardian asked bpTT the fol­low­ing ques­tions:

• Can bpTT say if it has in­di­cat­ed to the NGC that it can­not for the month of Jan­u­ary meet the nat­ur­al gas re­quire­ments of the At­las Methanol plant?

• Is this the first time this has been the case since the plant was con­struct­ed ?

• Why the in­abil­i­ty to meet the gas re­quire­ment?

• Does it have to do with bpTT no longer be­ing a share­hold­er?

In an im­me­di­ate re­sponse the com­pa­ny de­nied any sug­ges­tion that it does not have the gas to meet At­las de­mands be­cause it sold its in­ter­est in the methanol plant.

“BPTT is com­mit­ted to com­ply­ing with the terms of its gas sup­ply con­tracts and strong­ly de­nies your sug­ges­tion that any changes to At­las Methanol’s gas sup­ply are re­lat­ed to its di­vest­ment of its share­hold­ing in At­las Methanol” the com­pa­ny said.

“Due to con­fi­den­tial­i­ty pro­vi­sions in the gas sup­ply con­tract with NGC in ser­vice of At­las Methanol we are pre­clud­ed from pro­vid­ing in­for­ma­tion re­lat­ing to this con­tract.”

On June 29 last year, BP, the par­ent com­pa­ny of bpTT, an­nounced that it had agreed to sell its glob­al petro­chem­i­cals busi­ness to IN­EOS for a to­tal con­sid­er­a­tion of $5 bil­lion, sub­ject to cus­tom­ary ad­just­ments.

It said the agreed sale was the next strate­gic step in rein­vent­ing BP, that it will fur­ther strength­en BP’s bal­ance sheet and de­liv­ers its tar­get for agreed di­vest­ment a year ear­li­er than orig­i­nal­ly sched­uled.

Un­der the terms of the agree­ment, IN­EOS agreed to pay BP a de­posit of $400 mil­lion and a fur­ther $3.6 bil­lion on com­ple­tion. An ad­di­tion­al $1 bil­lion was de­ferred and is to be paid in three sep­a­rate in­stal­ments of $100 mil­lion in March, April and May 2021 with the re­main­ing $700 mil­lion payable by the end of June 2021.

BP’s petro­chem­i­cals busi­ness was fo­cused on two main ar­eas —aro­mat­ics and acetyls—with in­ter­ests in 14 man­u­fac­tur­ing plants in Asia, Eu­rope and the US and in 2019 pro­duced 9.7 mil­lion tonnes of petro­chem­i­cals.

Part of the sale was the com­pa­ny’s al­most 40 per cent in­ter­est in At­las Methanol.

IN­EOS is a lead­ing glob­al chem­i­cals com­pa­ny with a net­work span­ning over 180 sites in 26 coun­tries, em­ploy­ing 22,000 staff world­wide. Over the past two decades, IN­EOS has ac­quired a num­ber of busi­ness­es from BP, most no­tably the 2005 $9 bil­lion pur­chase of In­novene, the BP sub­sidiary that com­prised the ma­jor­i­ty of BP’s then chem­i­cals as­sets and two re­finer­ies.

Last month bpTT added that its pro­duc­tion in 2020 and 2021 has been im­pact­ed by the dis­ap­point­ing re­sults from its in­fill drilling pro­grammes at the be­gin­ning of 2019.

“Fol­low­ing the re­sults of the in­fill drilling pro­gramme in 2019, we sought to mit­i­gate pro­duc­tion de­clines by in­creas­ing our fo­cus on well work and sys­tem op­ti­mi­sa­tion to max­imise pro­duc­tion from our ex­ist­ing fields. These mea­sures had the de­sired ef­fect in 2019 and 2020 of slow­ing the rate of nat­ur­al field de­clines.”

The com­pa­ny said it will con­tin­ue to fo­cus on well work and sys­tem op­ti­mi­sa­tion in­to 2021 how­ev­er its out­look for next year has been im­pact­ed neg­a­tive­ly by COVID-19.

“The virus has im­pact­ed the sched­ule for the Cas­sia Com­pres­sion project, the start-up of which has been de­layed from 2021 in­to 2022. The com­bined ef­fect of nat­ur­al field de­clines and the de­lay in the Cas­sia com­pres­sion project means that our pro­duc­tion out­look for 2021 will be low­er than 2020. We do an­tic­i­pate that in 2022 pro­duc­tion vol­umes will im­prove with the start-up of the Cas­sia Com­pres­sion and Mat­a­pal projects,” it added.

The At­las methanol plant is one of the largest in the world and the sec­ond largest in the coun­try. It pro­duces 5,000 tonne/day or 1.7m tonne/year.

It start­ed con­struc­tion in 2001 and was com­plet­ed in 2004 at a cost of the $400m .

On­ly last week the ma­jor­i­ty share­hold­er in At­las Methanol, Methanex Cor­po­ra­tion an­nounced it will fo­cus on run­ning on­ly At­las in T&T be­cause it was not con­fi­dent of reach­ing an agree­ment with the NGC for gas for its Ti­tan methanol plant.

Late last year Methanex spent hun­dreds of mil­lions of TT dol­lars to do turn­around on the At­las Methanol Plant.