Ke­jan Haynes

Lead Ed­i­tor- News­gath­er­ing

ke­jan.haynes@guardian.co.tt

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal says there has been no new head­way in dis­cus­sions with Nu­trien, as the com­pa­ny con­tin­ues steps to­ward a tem­po­rary shut­down of its op­er­a­tions at Point Lisas.

Speak­ing out­side Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, Mooni­lal said, “The lat­est po­si­tion with Nu­trien is the cur­rent po­si­tion with Nu­trien. They are tak­ing steps, I be­lieve, on a tem­po­rary shut­down.”

Nu­trien Lim­it­ed an­nounced a con­trolled shut­down of its Trinidad Ni­tro­gen op­er­a­tions on Oc­to­ber 23, cit­ing port ac­cess re­stric­tions im­posed by the Na­tion­al En­er­gy Cor­po­ra­tion and an un­re­li­able gas sup­ply. The com­pa­ny al­so con­tin­ues to dis­pute claims that it owes sev­er­al mil­lion dol­lars in retroac­tive port fees, a dis­agree­ment that has stalled progress.

Asked whether the stick­ing point of retroac­tive port fees had been re­solved, Mooni­lal de­clined to go in­to de­tail. “These are mat­ters that are re­al­ly con­fi­den­tial that we are dis­cussing,” he said.

He con­firmed that the Gov­ern­ment had al­ready made arrange­ments to man­age the im­pact of Nu­trien’s clo­sure, par­tic­u­lar­ly re­gard­ing car­bon diox­ide (CO2) sup­ply, which had been af­fect­ed by the com­pa­ny’s de­ci­sion to sus­pend op­er­a­tions ear­li­er this month.

Mooni­lal said Nu­trien had ex­pressed in­ter­est in oth­er lines of busi­ness in Trinidad and To­ba­go. “They have ex­pressed some in­ter­est in oth­er lines of busi­ness and deep­er in­te­gra­tion with our agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor, and so on. Those are mat­ters not on­ly for my­self, but for the min­is­ters and the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture and the Gov­ern­ment as a whole,” he said.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands dis­cus­sions are fo­cused on cre­at­ing an agree­ment that makes the com­pa­ny eco­nom­i­cal­ly vi­able lo­cal­ly while sup­port­ing di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion strate­gies. The com­pa­ny has sig­nif­i­cant ex­pe­ri­ence in agri­cul­ture, with a ma­jor im­pact on farm­land com­mu­ni­ties across Amer­i­ca, Cana­da, and Aus­tralia, sup­port­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly 300,000 cat­tle farm­ers an­nu­al­ly. Nu­trien has ex­per­tise in fer­tilis­er pro­duc­tion, soil test­ing, and ac­cess to a large net­work of agron­o­mists. The plan be­ing dis­cussed in­volves rein­vest­ing over sev­er­al years in­to re­vi­tal­is­ing idle state lands, pro­mot­ing rur­al de­vel­op­ment, and strength­en­ing di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion ini­tia­tives.

In the mean­time, Pro­man has stepped in to sup­ply CO2 to Massy Gas fol­low­ing the dis­rup­tion caused by Nu­trien’s shut­down. The com­pa­ny said it in­tends to con­tin­ue the arrange­ment “for the fore­see­able fu­ture”, though in­dus­try ex­perts have ques­tioned how long it can sus­tain the sup­ply at cur­rent prices.

Massy Gas vice pres­i­dent of Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions and Cor­po­rate Af­fairs Dionne Ligoure said the com­pa­ny’s new arrange­ment en­sures full sup­ply ca­pac­i­ty, adding, “We can as­sure our cus­tomers this plan en­ables us to not just re­sume, but to main­tain and pro­vide re­dun­dan­cy in the CO2 sup­ply.”