State owned Na­tion­al En­er­gy, which has as its man­date the con­cep­tu­al­i­sa­tion, pro­mo­tion, de­vel­op­ment and fa­cil­i­ta­tion of en­er­gy-based and down­stream in­dus­tries in Trinidad and To­ba­go has on­ly de­liv­ered one project in the last twelve years and none in the last five years.

The on­ly project the com­pa­ny has de­liv­ered is the Caribbean Gas Chem­i­cals, methanol to DME plant, which five years af­ter con­struc­tion start­ed is yet to ex­port a sin­gle met­ric tonne of methanol.

That project was it­self em­broiled in con­tro­ver­sy as it was seen as an at­tempt by the then Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship to claim a win be­fore it left of­fice. There were al­so is­sues sur­round­ing the gas price, with strong sug­ges­tions that it was more favourable than many oth­er com­pa­nies at the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate are now re­ceiv­ing.

Busi­ness Guardian asked Na­tion­al En­er­gy what has been its record in de­liv­er­ing on its core man­date and Na­tion­al En­er­gy ex­plained that it had slight­ly shift­ed its fo­cus and said this was in part caused by the gas chal­lenges T&T faces.

The com­pa­ny said, “In terms of heavy in­dus­tri­al (gas-based) projects, Na­tion­al En­er­gy has fa­cil­i­tat­ed the de­vel­op­ment of the Gas to Petro­chem­i­cals Com­plex owned by Caribbean Gas Chem­i­cal Lim­it­ed (CG­CL). That plant was con­struct­ed on the Na­tion­al En­er­gy-owned Union In­dus­tri­al Es­tate and is cur­rent­ly in the Com­mis­sion­ing Phase. The val­ue of the cap­i­tal ex­pen­di­ture for this project is ap­prox­i­mate­ly USD 1 Bil­lion.”

It added, “Ini­tial­ly, these in­dus­tries would have been cen­tred around nat­ur­al gas, but giv­en the coun­try’s cur­rent low­er nat­ur­al gas vol­ume sce­nario, and in keep­ing with Vi­sion 2030: The Na­tion­al De­vel­op­ment Strat­e­gy 2016-2030, Na­tion­al En­er­gy con­tin­ues to ag­gres­sive­ly ad­vance projects on this ba­sis.”

Chair­man Con­rad Enill ad­mit­ted that the com­pa­ny had not been able to de­liv­er heavy gas based projects and said a lot of its time over the last five years have been spent try­ing to main­tain its ports and fa­cil­i­ties and try­ing to im­prove its ef­fi­cien­cy.

While he promised that there would be a re­newed fo­cus for Na­tion­al En­er­gy, he stressed that it will con­tin­ue to deal with a chal­leng­ing and chang­ing en­er­gy en­vi­ron­ment, both lo­cal­ly and glob­al­ly.

As part of this changed en­vi­ron­ment Na­tion­al En­er­gy boasts that it has been able to fo­cus on Re­new­ables (RE) and En­er­gy Ef­fi­cien­cy (EE) Ini­tia­tives.

In re­sponse to ques­tions from BG the com­pa­ny crowed that it was cur­rent­ly fa­cil­i­tat­ing the Util­i­ty Scale Re­new­able En­er­gy Project head­ed by a con­sor­tium com­pris­ing bpTT, ShellTT and Light­source Re­new­able Glob­al De­vel­op­ment Lim­it­ed and cur­rent­ly as­sess­ing an op­por­tu­ni­ty for State par­tic­i­pa­tion in this project.

It must be not­ed that Light­source, BPTT and Shell put in a joint re­sponse to a Re­quest For Pro­pos­als for a Util­i­ty Scale project and there­fore can­not be seen as a project brought to the coun­try by Na­tion­al En­er­gy.

Na­tion­al En­er­gy said in 2019 it com­plet­ed a Su­per Es­co Strate­gic Busi­ness Mod­el As­sess­ment in con­junc­tion with the IDB.

‘This As­sess­ment ex­am­ined a mech­a­nism to fa­cil­i­tate the im­ple­men­ta­tion of en­er­gy ef­fi­cien­cy ini­tia­tives across the com­mer­cial and in­dus­tri­al sec­tors. We are cur­rent­ly eval­u­at­ing op­tions to ex­e­cute a pi­lot project in 2021.” Na­tion­al En­er­gy not­ed.

It added, “As a mem­ber of the En­er­gy Con­ser­va­tion and En­er­gy Ef­fi­cien­cy Com­mit­tee (a 2019 Cab­i­net-formed Com­mit­tee), Na­tion­al En­er­gy con­tributed to the de­vel­op­ment of the En­er­gy Con­ser­va­tion and En­er­gy Ef­fi­cien­cy Pol­i­cy and Ac­tion Plan for Trinidad and To­ba­go 2020-2024.”

Even though the com­pa­ny has not been able to se­cure gas based projects it said it is still fo­cused on gas based in­dus­tries and re­gion­al LNG Val­ue Chain Op­por­tu­ni­ties in the area of Ma­rine Bunker­ing and is some­thing it is look­ing in­to hav­ing com­plet­ed in 2019 a re­gion­al mar­ket as­sess­ment and are de­vel­op­ing mod­els for im­ple­men­ta­tion.

In chem­i­cals, the com­pa­ny said, it was de­vel­op­ing new ap­proach­es and busi­ness mod­els for chem­i­cal in­dus­try ex­pan­sion, in­clud­ing bio­chem­i­cals and spe­cif­ic met­als geared to­wards a green econ­o­my.

Na­tion­al En­er­gy told BG it is pur­su­ing projects that adopt low(er) car­bon tech­nolo­gies to sup­port a de­car­bon­i­sa­tion strat­e­gy.

“For Trinidad and To­ba­go, there is a sig­nif­i­cant op­por­tu­ni­ty to pro­duce hy­dro­gen, with par­tic­u­lar em­pha­sis as an in­put in­to the well-es­tab­lished petro­chem­i­cal sec­tor. We see hy­dro­gen tech­nol­o­gy as crit­i­cal, not on­ly for de­car­bon­i­sa­tion of the sec­tor, but al­so to add a sig­nif­i­cant el­e­ment of long-term eco­nom­ic sus­tain­abil­i­ty to the lo­cal en­er­gy sec­tor.” Na­tion­al En­er­gy said.

The gov­ern­ment has al­ready tak­en ac­tion and Na­tion­al En­er­gy last year lost its op­por­tu­ni­ty to do phase two of the Ga­le­o­ta port ex­pan­sion.

Enill said there will be changes com­ing in the way things are done through­out the NGC Group in­clud­ing Na­tion­al En­er­gy.

The com­pa­ny told BG that it was lay­ing the foun­da­tion for the fu­ture of in­vest­ment fa­cil­i­ta­tion and pro­mo­tion by lever­ag­ing tech­nol­o­gy for in­vest­ment fa­cil­i­ta­tion and pro­mo­tion.

In point­ed to its ttEn­gage in­vest­ment fa­cil­i­ta­tion plat­form which has seen sig­nif­i­cant in­ter­est from po­ten­tial in­vestors.

The last gas based project that Na­tion­al En­er­gy brought to fruition pri­or to CG­CL was the Methanol Hold­ings in­vest­ment. Time will tell whether the new term of the new gov­ern­ment will see im­proved per­for­mance.