Sto­ries by Gail Alexan­der

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young yes­ter­day re­it­er­at­ed that Nu­trien Ltd was not send­ing home any work­ers al­though it had de­cid­ed to shut down one of its five plants at the Pt Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate.

Re­spond­ing to Op­po­si­tion con­cerns on the per­ceived “shut­down” of the Nu­trien plant, Young not­ed the glob­al phe­nom­e­non in the en­er­gy in­dus­try as com­mod­i­ty mar­kets were af­fect­ed by the COVID-19 sit­u­a­tion.

“De­mand for oil and gas is com­plete­ly wiped out so sup­ply is af­fect­ed…Gov­ern­ment has no con­trol over that, it’s part of the COVID prob­lem,” he said

But Young said there’s been no Nu­trien shut­down.

“They’ve de­cid­ed to put one of their five plants in­to ‘idle’ for 90 days and they’re not let­ting go work­ers in this pe­ri­od. We’re mon­i­tor­ing it,” he said.

Young said it was for­tu­nate Gov­ern­ment has good re­la­tions with the Pt Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate op­er­a­tors.

“They’re do­ing the best they can to min­imise dis­lo­ca­tion, there will be some fall­out but we’re do­ing what we can to min­imise job loss,” he said.

On re­ports that 40 work­ers were let go, Young said Nu­trien said they had no in­ten­tion of shut­ting down and Gov­ern­ment is mon­i­tor­ing it.

“Let’s see what hap­pens…as we go through the COVID sit­u­a­tion,” he said, adding it was un­for­tu­nate peo­ple were af­fect­ed.

Young, how­ev­er, de­nied the Nu­trien sit­u­a­tion was af­fect­ing am­mo­nia sup­ply to farm­ers. He said four of Nu­trien’s five plants pro­duce am­mo­nia and one does urea. He said the idle plant is one that does am­mo­nia but none of Nu­trien’s am­mo­nia is sold lo­cal­ly.

He added that the urea plant con­tin­ues sup­ply­ing the lo­cal agri-mar­ket, say­ing he spoke to Nu­trien yes­ter­day and there was no ef­fect on urea sup­ply.

On an­oth­er is­sue, Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Clarence Ramb­harat clar­i­fied that there had been no in­crease in LPG 20-pound gas cylin­der prices.

How­ev­er, he said the trans­port fee by pri­vate de­liv­ery was raised re­cent­ly from $4 to $7. The $4 price ex­ist­ed for 15 years, he added.

The de­liv­ery price for the 100-pound cylin­der wasn’t in­creased and the price of both sizes of cylin­ders al­so re­main the same.