Asha Javeed

Lead Ed­i­tor In­ves­ti­ga­tions

asha.javeed@guardian.co.tt

Ni­Quan yes­ter­day ter­mi­nat­ed its 75 em­ploy­ees and will now moth­ball its Pointe-a-Pierre plant, which had been in “sleep” mode.

In an email to all staff, Ni­Quan’s founder and di­rec­tor Ains­ley Gill said the com­pa­ny had run out of mon­ey try­ing to keep the plant op­er­a­tional.

But it is a wind-up pe­ti­tion filed by its for­mer vice pres­i­dent David Small last month which was the fi­nal blow for the trou­bled Gas to Liq­uids (GTL) plant.

“Fur­ther, it is like­ly that a wind­ing-up or­der will be made by the High Court pur­suant to a wind­ing-up pe­ti­tion brought against the com­pa­ny by two un­se­cured cred­i­tors. The next hear­ing be­fore the court is sched­uled for the May 3, 2024. As a re­sult of this pend­ing ap­point­ment of a liq­uida­tor by the court, the com­pa­ny is un­able to ex­tend the cur­rent fur­lough past the date of the 30th of April 2024. There­fore, at 5 pm on the 30th of April 2024, your con­tract of em­ploy­ment will be ter­mi­nat­ed and the com­pa­ny will is­sue in­di­vid­ual for­mal ter­mi­na­tion let­ters,” Gill said in the let­ter to em­ploy­ees.

Em­ploy­ees have been fur­loughed since Sep­tem­ber 2023, af­ter the plant was shut down fol­low­ing the death of Massy En­er­gy em­ploy­ee Al­lan­lane Ramkissoon on June 15, 2023, and the ter­mi­na­tion of the gas sup­ply con­tract by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Up­stream Down­stream Com­pa­ny (TTUDEO­CL) over a US$21 mil­lion debt.

Em­ploy­ees told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that their Na­tion­al In­sur­ance (NIS) pay­ments and Pay As You Earn (PAYE) are al­so not paid up to date by the com­pa­ny, al­though they had been de­duct­ed from their salaries. In ad­di­tion, Ni­Quan did not make con­tri­bu­tions to their pen­sion plan, which was part of their em­ploy­ment pack­age with the Guardian Group.

In an email shared by the em­ploy­ees, which was sent by the Hu­man Re­sources team last year when they queried the mat­ter, it said, “The com­pa­ny has, and al­ways has had, every in­ten­tion to pay and re­solve this mat­ter ful­ly with the In­land Rev­enue and the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Board and has been li­ais­ing with them con­tin­u­ous­ly. For in­for­ma­tion, in no way would any em­ploy­ee be per­son­al­ly held re­spon­si­ble to set­tle any short­falls own­ing In­land Rev­enue, that onus is on the com­pa­ny through the PAYE sys­tem, as are in­curred penal­ties.”

How­ev­er, the let­ter not­ed that the out­stand­ing debt was sup­posed to be set­tled on the at­tain­ment of the com­mer­cial op­er­a­tions date (COD), which has not been yet achieved.

Moth­balled

In his email, Gill said the com­pa­ny has no oth­er op­tion now but to moth­ball its Pointe-a-Pierre plant.

“Dur­ing these last few months, the com­pa­ny has been pre­serv­ing the plant in a wet layup in an­tic­i­pa­tion of an am­i­ca­ble so­lu­tion and the re­turn of gas. How­ev­er, fol­low­ing the dis­pro­por­tion­ate cur­tail­ment of gas sup­ply suf­fered by the com­pa­ny, fol­lowed by the wrong­ful ter­mi­na­tion of the Gas Sup­ply Con­tract (GSC), it is with dis­ap­point­ment and frus­tra­tion that the com­pa­ny has no oth­er al­ter­na­tive, but to now place the plant in­to a dry layup and moth­balled sta­tus.

“As a di­rect con­se­quence of the dif­fi­cul­ties men­tioned above, it is with deep re­gret that the com­pa­ny’s se­nior se­cured mort­gage note­hold­ers have been un­able to fund the com­pa­ny as we rea­son­ably ex­pect­ed, and as a fur­ther di­rect con­se­quence, the com­pa­ny is now un­able to con­tin­ue to pre­serve the GTL plant,” Gill said.

On Feb­ru­ary 1, Small, who was award­ed a $20,647,017 mil­lion judg­ment by the courts five months ago for breach of con­tract by Ni­Quan ini­ti­at­ed a wind-up pe­ti­tion due to non-pay­ment of the amount.

Small was Ni­Quan’s vice pres­i­dent of Glob­al En­er­gy Ser­vices since 2015 and ex­it­ed the com­pa­ny in No­vem­ber 2021. His judg­ment in Sep­tem­ber 2023, came amid fi­nan­cial prob­lems plagu­ing the com­pa­ny. Its debt had bal­looned and it had gone of­fline af­ter not get­ting per­mis­sion to op­er­ate by the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries (MEEI), be­fore it lost the nat­ur­al gas con­tract for the plant.

In his wind-up pe­ti­tion, Small wrote to all the fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions that Ni­Quan does busi­ness with - Re­pub­lic Bank Lim­it­ed, Sco­tia­bank Trinidad and To­ba­go Lim­it­ed, First Cit­i­zens Bank Lim­it­ed, RBC Roy­al Bank (Trinidad & To­ba­go) Lim­it­ed, PECU Cred­it Union Co­op­er­a­tive So­ci­ety, JMMB Group Trinidad and To­ba­go, First­line Se­cu­ri­ties Lim­it­ed and the Cen­tral Fi­nance Fa­cil­i­ty Co­op­er­a­tive So­ci­ety - with no­tice of the judg­ment and his in­ten­tion to pe­ti­tion to wind-up the com­pa­ny.

How­ev­er, all the fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions, through their lawyers, sought to have a hear­ing on Small’s mat­ter ad­journed un­til their clients could make rep­re­sen­ta­tions and be al­lowed to par­tic­i­pate in the pro­ceed­ings.

Re­pub­lic Bank ar­gued that an or­der to wind-up the com­pa­ny could jeop­ar­dise the ini­tia­tive to the detri­ment of se­cured and un­se­cured cred­i­tors.

In mak­ing its case to the court, Re­pub­lic Bank ar­gued that should the com­pa­ny be­come op­er­a­tional, Small would be re­paid.

Gill, in his ap­pli­ca­tion on March 5 to dis­miss the wind-up pe­ti­tion, de­scribed Small’s ac­tion as “op­pres­sive and un­fair”.

“There are oth­er more ap­pro­pri­ate reme­dies avail­able to Mr Small in or­der to re­cov­er any in­debt­ed­ness owed to him,” he said in his af­fi­davit.

For his part, Gill’s de­fence is that while “Ni­Quan is ex­pe­ri­enc­ing cash flow dif­fi­cul­ties, on a bal­ance sheet analy­sis, its to­tal as­sets ex­ceed the val­ue of the debt claimed by Mr Small and the ag­gre­gate val­ue of all of its debts owed to its oth­er cred­i­tors.”

On No­vem­ber 7, 2023, Re­pub­lic Bank, along with oth­er note­hold­ers, passed a res­o­lu­tion to ap­point a steer­ing com­mit­tee among note­hold­ers to es­tab­lish a plan for the now de­funct plant mov­ing for­ward.

To this end, the steer­ing com­mit­tee has en­gaged Price­wa­ter­house­C­oop­ers to de­vel­op a plan to re­ha­bil­i­tate the com­pa­ny with a view to mak­ing op­er­a­tions to set­tle its oblig­a­tions to its var­i­ous cred­i­tor groups.

That time­line is be­tween eight to 12 months.