Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

Ni­Quan En­er­gy will have to wait un­til Mon­day to learn the fate of its ap­pli­ca­tion for an in­junc­tion against the Gov­ern­ment to com­pel it to re­sume its nat­ur­al gas sup­ply.

High Court Judge Kevin Ram­cha­ran re­served his de­ci­sion on the ap­pli­ca­tion af­ter hear­ing sub­mis­sions from the com­pa­ny, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Up­stream Down­stream En­er­gy Op­er­a­tions Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (TTUDEO­CL), and the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, yes­ter­day morn­ing.

Guardian Me­dia made a re­quest to ac­cess the hear­ing based on pub­lic in­ter­est in the case but it was de­nied by Jus­tice Ram­cha­ran, who not­ed that the mat­ter was be­ing heard in cham­ber.

TTUDEO­CL is a spe­cial pur­pose com­pa­ny in the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries and was set up specif­i­cal­ly to ne­go­ti­ate Ni­Quan’s gas agree­ment.

Ni­Quan’s con­tract with the TTUDEO­CL is for the sum of 31 mil­lion stan­dard cu­bic feet per day (mm­scf/d), or less than one per cent (ap­prox­i­mate­ly 0.8 per cent) of T&T’s dai­ly gas sup­ply. TTUDEO­CL sources nat­ur­al gas from the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC).

Ni­Quan is al­leg­ing that TTUDEO­CL has stopped sup­ply­ing it with the nat­ur­al gas it needs to run its op­er­a­tions, which is a breach of con­tract.

For its part, TTUCEO­CL said it stopped sup­ply­ing Ni­Quan with gas af­ter the com­pa­ny ac­crued a debt of US$19 mil­lion, which re­mains un­paid. As a re­sult, TTUDEO­CL re­mains in­debt­ed to the NGC for non-pay­ment.

Ni­Quan claims the com­pa­ny stands to lose hun­dreds of mil­lions in in­vest­ments if it is not sup­plied with nat­ur­al gas.

The com­pa­ny filed in­junc­tive pro­ceed­ings, amongst oth­er re­liefs, ask­ing that the court or­der TTUDEO­CL to sup­ply gas to Ni­Quan on a guar­an­teed ba­sis and not sub­ject to avail­abil­i­ty based on the terms and con­di­tions of the gas sup­ply con­tract.

Ni­Quan’s move against one state com­pa­ny comes af­ter an­oth­er state agency—the Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Agency (OS­HA)—start­ed in­ves­ti­gat­ing it for a Ju­ly 15 ac­ci­dent at the plant, which led to the death of 35-year-old Massy En­er­gy En­gi­neered So­lu­tions Lim­it­ed (MEES) em­ploy­ee Al­lan­lane Ramkissoon.

MEES was con­duct­ing main­te­nance on the plant at the time.

Ramkisson’s death neg­a­tive­ly im­pact­ed Ni­Quan’s cash flow.

On Ju­ly 30, the Sun­day Guardian ex­clu­sive­ly re­port­ed that Ni­Quan was over US$250 mil­lion (TT$1.7 bil­lion) in debt and that it was strug­gling to meet pay­ments to the tune of mil­lions owed to con­trac­tors, which in­clude Ju­nior Sam­my and MEES.

Ni­Quan was set to re­fi­nance its bonds in the sum of US$300 mil­lion (TT$2 bil­lion) by Ju­ly 31 but the ac­ci­dent at the plant set it back.

The T&T Guardian un­der­stands that the com­pa­ny’s founder and chief vi­sion­ary of­fi­cer Ains­ley Gill saw le­gal ac­tion as his on­ly re­course to res­cue the project.

Gill, a for­mer US-based lob­by­ist in Wash­ing­ton DC un­der the Patrick Man­ning ad­min­is­tra­tion, bought and in­vest­ed in the aban­doned plant with the goal to turn it in­to the West­ern Hemi­sphere’s first gas-to-liq­uids plant.

Ni­Quan raised mon­ey on the in­ter­na­tion­al bond mar­ket, loans, and sums from lo­cal in­vestors, which in­clude Re­pub­lic Bank Lim­it­ed, RBC Trust (Trinidad and To­ba­go) Lim­it­ed, Bea­con In­sur­ance Com­pa­ny, First­line Se­cu­ri­ties, Prime Cap­i­tal Lim­it­ed, JMMB Se­cu­ri­ties Lim­it­ed, Wa­ter­loo Cap­i­tal Ad­vi­sors, KCL Cap­i­tal Mar­ket Bro­kers Lim­it­ed, In­shal­lah In­vest­ments, Farm Chem En­gi­neer­ing Man­age­ment Lim­it­ed, GM Homes Lim­it­ed, M&J Ser­vices Lim­it­ed, Cen­tral Fi­nance Fa­cil­i­ty Co­op­er­a­tive So­ci­ety of Trinidad and To­ba­go Lim­it­ed, Petrotrin and the Wash­ing­ton DC reg­is­tered Ni­Quan En­er­gy LLC.

Ni­Quan was rep­re­sent­ed by Stephen Singh, Vivek Lakhan-Joseph and Raphael Mor­ton-Git­tens. TTUDEO­CL was rep­re­sent­ed by Deb­o­rah Peake, SC, Ravi Heffes-Doon, and Alana Bisses­sar, while Rus­sell Mar­tineau, SC, Raquel Le Blanc, Mur­vani Ojah Ma­haraj and Lianne Thomas rep­re­sent­ed the AG’s Of­fice.