Ke­jan Haynes

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

ke­jan.haynes@guardian.co.tt

The Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) says it is mov­ing swift­ly to ad­dress a car­bon diox­ide (CO2) short­age caused by its on­go­ing dis­pute with Nu­trien over port fees and ac­cess re­stric­tions at Point Lisas.

The dis­agree­ment led to Nu­trien’s shut­down of its am­mo­nia and oth­er plants, ef­fec­tive­ly cut­ting off T&T’s pri­ma­ry source of CO2.

In a let­ter to cus­tomers, Massy Gas Prod­ucts an­nounced that its CO2-re­lat­ed prod­ucts—in­clud­ing dry ice, cylin­ders, de­wars, and ISO tanks—would be tem­porar­i­ly un­avail­able un­til fur­ther no­tice.

The com­pa­ny at­trib­uted the dis­rup­tion to Nu­trien’s con­trolled shut­down of its Trinidad Ni­tro­gen op­er­a­tions, cit­ing “port ac­cess re­stric­tions im­posed by Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Na­tion­al En­er­gy cor­po­ra­tion (NEC) and a lack of re­li­able and eco­nom­ic nat­ur­al gas sup­ply.”

Nu­trien, which pro­duces am­mo­nia, is the main—pos­si­bly sole—sup­pli­er of CO2 in the coun­try, as the gas is a by-prod­uct of the am­mo­nia pro­duc­tion process.

Massy said it was en­gag­ing with stake­hold­ers to iden­ti­fy al­ter­na­tive sources, while NGC con­firmed it was co­or­di­nat­ing with Pro­man and Plipde­co to en­sure con­ti­nu­ity of sup­ply.

Ac­cord­ing to NGC, Pro­man has agreed to sup­ply the same vol­ume of CO2 pre­vi­ous­ly pro­vid­ed by Nu­trien, at un­changed prices.

NGC said en­gi­neer­ing tie-ins were be­ing in­stalled and should be com­plet­ed by Mon­day, while Plipde­co has ex­pe­dit­ed the nec­es­sary per­mits.

Massy added that its ex­ist­ing stock should meet do­mes­tic de­mand un­til the tran­si­tion is com­plet­ed.

Al­though Pro­man Ltd us­es CO2 in its methanol pro­duc­tion, it does not pro­duce the gas it­self. The com­pa­ny said it con­sumes car­bon diox­ide from near­by fer­tilis­er plants in Trinidad.

As a re­sult, Pro­man will now have to ad­just its own pro­duc­tion process­es to sup­ply CO2 to Massy Gas.

It re­mains un­clear who will bear the cost of con­struct­ing the new in­fra­struc­ture to trans­fer CO2 from Pro­man’s fa­cil­i­ties to Massy Gas at Point Lisas.

NGC de­scribed Nu­trien’s shut­down as “un­for­tu­nate and re­gret­table,” ac­cus­ing the com­pa­ny of show­ing “in­dif­fer­ence to the hard­ship it could cause lo­cal in­dus­tries.”

The state en­ter­prise com­mend­ed what it called “pa­tri­ot­ic team­work” among oth­er stake­hold­ers for help­ing avert ma­jor dis­rup­tions.

The shut­down stems from a dis­pute over ex­pired port user agree­ments. While tem­po­rary arrange­ments have al­lowed con­tin­ued port ac­cess, ne­go­ti­a­tions re­main on­go­ing as NGC seeks a sig­nif­i­cant rate in­crease and back­dat­ed fees cov­er­ing three years.

Nu­trien has re­port­ed­ly re­fused to pay US$28 mil­lion in dis­put­ed charges.

In­dus­try sources warn that a pro­longed CO2 short­age could af­fect hos­pi­tals, food and bev­er­age pro­duc­ers, and cold stor­age fa­cil­i­ties. CO2 is wide­ly used in med­ical pro­ce­dures, such as min­i­mal­ly in­va­sive surg­eries, and in gas mix­tures for breath­ing as­sis­tance and anaes­the­sia.

NGC said it is main­tain­ing close com­mu­ni­ca­tion with bev­er­age man­u­fac­tur­ers and oth­er users to “al­lay any fears and hys­te­ria caused by mis­in­for­ma­tion,” and pledged to safe­guard the in­ter­ests of cit­i­zens and the wider en­er­gy sec­tor as the sit­u­a­tion de­vel­ops.