Na­tion­al En­er­gy has re­ject­ed blame for Nu­trien’s shut­down of its Trinidad op­er­a­tions, say­ing the de­ci­sion “is not one for which any re­spon­si­bil­i­ty can be as­cribed to Na­tion­al En­er­gy or NGC.”

In a de­tailed state­ment, the com­pa­ny said that when cur­rent of­fi­cials as­sumed of­fice, they found sev­er­al ex­pired or ne­glect­ed Pier User Agree­ments that al­lowed com­pa­nies, in­clud­ing Nu­trien, to pay “pep­per­corn lega­cy rates” for years, cost­ing tax­pay­ers over $500 mil­lion. It said Nu­trien’s 2006 agree­ment ex­pired in De­cem­ber 2020, yet the com­pa­ny “de­mand­ed a rate low­er than that which they en­joyed for the pre­vi­ous 15 years.”

Na­tion­al En­er­gy said it pro­posed new port and pier fees rang­ing “from US$0.02 to US$2.00 per met­ric ton of prod­uct,” at a time when am­mo­nia prices were ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$545 per met­ric ton. It ex­plained that the Na­tion­al En­er­gy Board made its pro­pos­al “in good faith to pro­vide the par­ties with a suit­able foun­da­tion to en­gage in and agree up­on new terms and con­di­tions, there­by al­low­ing Nu­trien to con­tin­ue op­er­a­tions, ser­vice its cus­tomers and re­tain its em­ploy­ees.”

How­ev­er, ac­cord­ing to Na­tion­al En­er­gy, this pro­pos­al “was met with a de­mand by Nu­trien that NGC set­tle the is­sue of fu­ture gas sup­ply, to se­cure the over­all eco­nom­ic vi­a­bil­i­ty of Nu­trien, even though Nu­trien cur­rent­ly en­joys the ben­e­fit of an ex­ist­ing gas sup­ply con­tract.”

It said Nu­trien “de­mand­ed that the in­voiced sum of US$28 mil­lion be with­drawn as a pre-con­di­tion to any ne­go­ti­a­tion” and threat­ened to shut down op­er­a­tions and blame NEC pub­licly. To avert that, NEC al­lowed the com­pa­ny to con­tin­ue us­ing port fa­cil­i­ties at lega­cy rates un­til De­cem­ber 2025 while pur­su­ing a new agree­ment.

“Nei­ther NGC nor Na­tion­al En­er­gy has a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to sub­sidise the op­er­a­tions of oth­er com­pa­nies to se­cure their eco­nom­ic vi­a­bil­i­ty,” the state­ment added. “Na­tion­al En­er­gy is sat­is­fied that it has tak­en all rea­son­able steps to sup­port the con­tin­ued op­er­a­tions of Nu­trien, whilst at the same time ful­fill­ing its man­date to seek the best in­ter­est of the cit­i­zens of our coun­try, in­clud­ing the em­ploy­ees of Nu­trien.”

“De­spite our best ef­forts, Nu­trien has tak­en the de­ci­sion to shut down its op­er­a­tions,” Na­tion­al En­er­gy said, adding that it “re­grets the shut­down” but will redi­rect the gas orig­i­nal­ly al­lo­cat­ed to Nu­trien to oth­er down­stream plants on the Point Lisas es­tate.

How­ev­er, de­spite re­ports that the dis­pute had been re­solved, an in­ter­nal memo from Nu­trien shows the com­pa­ny has al­ready shut down its Trinidad op­er­a­tions and re­mains dis­sat­is­fied with the out­come of its talks with Na­tion­al En­er­gy.

Fol­low­ing a high-lev­el meet­ing in­volv­ing Nu­trien, the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC), and Na­tion­al En­er­gy, NGC agreed to with­draw its claim for US$28 mil­lion in retroac­tive port fees and re­open ac­cess to the port fa­cil­i­ties. Nu­trien had been prepar­ing to file an in­junc­tion but agreed to stand down af­ter the dis­cus­sions.

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal said talks are con­tin­u­ing with Nu­trien and oth­er users of the Point Lisas port as the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries works to up­date con­trac­tu­al arrange­ments.

He con­firmed that dis­cus­sions in­volve the Na­tion­al En­er­gy Cor­po­ra­tion and fo­cus on port ac­cess and the need to bring ex­ist­ing con­tracts up to date.

“This mat­ter will con­tin­ue to oc­cu­py our at­ten­tion as we work with the var­i­ous users of the port to reg­u­larise and up­date con­trac­tu­al arrange­ments,” Mooni­lal said, adding that the min­istry ex­pects to pro­vide fur­ther up­dates in the com­ing days.