The fu­ture of At­lantic LNG’s op­er­a­tions and, more specif­i­cal­ly, the sta­tus of Train 1 is still be­ing dis­cussed by stake­hold­ers. This even though the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny of T&T Ltd (NGC) has al­ready spent tens of mil­lion of dol­lars to restart the Train 1 plant.

Min­is­ter of En­er­gy Stu­art Young, in re­sponse to ques­tions about the LNG plant dur­ing the sign­ing of a gas sales agree­ment be­tween the NGC and Trinidad Ni­tro­gen Com­pa­ny Ltd (Trin­gen), con­firmed that a fi­nal de­ci­sion has not been made.

“Right now the Gov­ern­ment is in some very sen­si­tive ne­go­ti­a­tions and dis­cus­sions with the share­hold­ers of At­lantic as we look for­ward to the fu­ture of what At­lantic looks like,” said Young in re­sponse to a ques­tion posed to him by Guardian Me­dia.

Young said the LNG mar­ket re­mained very “vi­brant” and he reg­u­lar­ly mon­i­tored ac­tiv­i­ty in the sec­tor.

“You would be aware that the whole glob­al scheme in­clud­ing LNG is a very vi­brant one and a chang­ing one.

“So, for ex­am­ple, this morn­ing, one of the first things I looked at is cur­rent Russ­ian in­vest­ments in the Arc­tic and the con­struc­tion of fur­ther trains to deal with LNG,” he said, “All of these types of things change the glob­al LNG mar­ket. And so these are some of the things that we’re look­ing at as T&T con­tin­ues to be very com­pet­i­tive in the LNG en­vi­ron­ment.”

Train 1 first came in­to op­er­a­tions in Point Fortin back in March 1999, and pro­duced LNG for the first time a month lat­er paving the way for the lu­cra­tive LNG in­dus­try in the en­er­gy sec­tor. Since then At­lantic has built three more LNG plants, called in the sec­tor “trains,” in the South West­ern Penin­su­la.

How­ev­er, over the past three years, the con­tin­ued op­er­a­tion of the Train 1, as well as the preser­va­tion of jobs at­tached to it, have come in­to fo­cus.

In No­vem­ber 2018, Gov­ern­ment had an­nounced plans to ex­tend Train 1 for five more years be­yond its 20-year life, which would have come to an end in April 2019.

Con­cern over the fu­ture op­er­a­tions of Train 1 in­ten­si­fied 2019, when BPTT could not as­sure a con­tin­ued gas sup­ply to the train. How­ev­er, amid con­cerns raised then, Im­bert as­sured that op­er­a­tions would con­tin­ue.

In De­cem­ber 2020, late Min­is­ter of En­er­gy Franklin Khan al­so gave as­sur­ances that Train 1 would not be moth­balled at the start of this year.

In his con­tri­bu­tion be­fore the Par­lia­ment, Khan said, “Train 1 will con­tin­ue to op­er­ate in 2021 and will be part of wider ne­go­ti­a­tions, which have been tak­ing place among the At­lantic LNG share­hold­ers to form one uni­tised fa­cil­i­ty en­com­pass­ing all four Trains.”

Khan said NGC would fa­cil­i­tate a turn­around of At­lantic Train 1 and would keep it in “op­er­a­tions ready mode” for all of 2021 in­to 2022.

Young could not say if op­er­a­tions would be re­duced of even ex­pand­ed at this time.

“With re­spect to the fu­ture of At­lantic, work has been done at Train 1, but as we look for­ward at the fu­ture of At­lantic, one of the con­ver­sa­tions, ob­vi­ous­ly, tak­ing place is, are we go­ing to be a four train At­lantic go­ing for­ward? Or are we go­ing to be a three train At­lantic go­ing for­ward? Is there po­ten­tial gas down the line that may even add an­oth­er train when that gas comes to mar­ket? So, these are some of the types of con­ver­sa­tions tak­ing place and at the ap­pro­pri­ate time, we’ll be able to say more,” said Young.

How­ev­er, for­mer En­er­gy Min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine did not share such a pos­i­tive out­look, as he ques­tioned the abil­i­ty of Train 1 to re­sume op­er­a­tions af­ter a sig­nif­i­cant pe­ri­od of down time.

Ram­nar­ine said Train 1 had not been in op­er­a­tion since last No­vem­ber.

“In the his­to­ry of this coun­try’s LNG in­dus­try, no train has ever been down con­tin­u­ous­ly for sev­en months. Train 1 has been down con­tin­u­ous­ly for sev­en months. Train 1 was tak­en down in No­vem­ber 2020 and its still down,” said Ram­nar­ine, who won­dered if this down pe­ri­od could be­come prob­lem­at­ic when pro­duc­tion at the train re­sumes.

“It is, there­fore, a con­cern that giv­en the train has been down for that pe­ri­od of time, there will be is­sues to restart should gas be­come avail­able. One of the fac­tors with a train like Train 1 is that it has a lot of ro­tat­ing equip­ment. And ro­tat­ing equip­ment, if it is not ro­tat­ing, if it is not in mo­tion and if it is idle for a long pe­ri­od of time it could be­come com­pro­mised,” said Ram­nar­ine, who likened the train to car that has not been parked up for an ex­tend­ed pe­ri­od.

“It is sim­i­lar to if you have a car and you don’t start your car for sev­en months, then you go­ing to have is­sues with the mov­ing parts in your en­gine. Things might seize,” he said.

His oth­er con­cern, was the po­ten­tial sup­ply of gas to Train 1 as he not­ed that gas sup­ply to At­lantic’s old­est train has been in ques­tion for some time.

“Does BP have or does NGC have the gas to sup­ply Train 1?” he asked, not­ing that giv­en Train 1’s ca­pac­i­ty of 492 mil­lion cu­bic feet of gas, it would re­quire half of that to run prop­er­ly?

“Where is this 246 mil­lion cu­bic feet of nat­ur­al gas com­ing from to run train 1?” said Ram­nar­ine, who al­so not­ed that Trinidad and To­ba­go’s over­all gas pro­duc­tion had dropped sig­nif­i­cant­ly.

He es­ti­mat­ed that Trinidad and To­ba­go was cur­rent­ly pro­duc­ing about 2.8 bil­lion cu­bic feet of gas cur­rent­ly, about bil­lion cu­bic feet less than it pro­duced in 2015.

“The ques­tion is even if the train is ready to restart, where is the gas gonna come from, be­cause the larg­er is­sue that has to be ad­dressed is the whole is­sue of gas pro­duc­tion right now. Right now, we are in the dol­drums of the last 16 years. Gas pro­duc­tion is the low­est right now it’s been since 2004, so the ques­tion is where the gas is go­ing to come from in 2021, maybe gas will be avail­able in 2022 for Train 1 to restart,” he said, not­ing that while there were gas projects cur­rent­ly in the pipeline, they were not like­ly to im­prove to cur­rent sta­tus of gas pro­duc­tion in the coun­try un­til next year.

The con­cern over the gas sup­ply had in­deed formed much of dis­cus­sion dur­ing the Gas Sales agree­ment be­tween NGC and Trin­gen, with Pres­i­dent of Clean Am­mo­nia - Yara In­ter­na­tion­al, Mag­nus Krogh Ankarstrand not­ing it was im­por­tant that his com­pa­ny get a con­sis­tent sup­ply of gas from Trinidad.

No­tably dur­ing the sign­ing, NGC chair­man Con­rad Enill said the com­pa­ny had to em­brace change with a po­ten­tial shift in fo­cus from pro­duc­tion dri­ven to mar­ket dri­ven and, as such, we should see T&T as an “in­te­grat­ed play­er across the nat­ur­al gas val­ue chain while ag­gres­sive­ly pur­su­ing the green en­er­gy agen­da.”