GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Se­nior Re­porter

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

The Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) has agreed to waive its US$28 mil­lion claim in retroac­tive port fees from glob­al fer­tilis­er gi­ant Nu­trien Ltd, amidst a threat of le­gal ac­tion by the Cana­di­an com­pa­ny.

The par­ties al­so reached an in­ter­im agree­ment grant­i­ng Nu­trien un­re­strict­ed ac­cess to port fa­cil­i­ties un­til De­cem­ber 31, a tem­po­rary but vi­tal re­prieve.

The agree­ment came af­ter Nu­trien moved to ini­ti­ate le­gal ac­tion. How­ev­er, lit­i­ga­tion was abort­ed af­ter high-lev­el talks in­volv­ing NGC, Nu­trien and the Na­tion­al En­er­gy Cor­po­ra­tion (NEC), aimed at avert­ing a cri­sis at the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate, were called.

Ef­forts are now un­der­way to restart Nu­trien’s Trinidad Ni­tro­gen op­er­a­tions, though full func­tion­al­i­ty may not be re­stored un­til to­day.

How­ev­er, sources said the sit­u­a­tion is not yet ful­ly re­solved, as low gas sup­ply re­mains an on­go­ing chal­lenge.

The res­o­lu­tion to restart comes at a crit­i­cal mo­ment, as es­ca­lat­ing ten­sions had threat­ened to dis­rupt am­mo­nia and urea pro­duc­tion at the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate—key con­trib­u­tors to the na­tion’s petro­chem­i­cal ex­ports. It al­so comes as a sigh of re­lief to the 600 work­ers whose jobs were on the line.

On Tues­day, Nu­trien an­nounced that it would ini­ti­ate a con­trolled shut­down of its Point Lisas plant start­ing to­day, cit­ing on­go­ing chal­lenges with port ac­cess re­stric­tions and un­re­li­able nat­ur­al gas sup­ply.

“This shut­down is in re­sponse to port ac­cess re­stric­tions im­posed by T&T’s NEC and a lack of re­li­able and eco­nom­ic nat­ur­al gas sup­ply that has re­duced the free cash flow con­tri­bu­tion of the Trinidad Ni­tro­gen op­er­a­tions over an ex­tend­ed pe­ri­od of time. Nu­trien will con­tin­ue to en­gage with stake­hold­ers and as­sess op­tions with re­spect to its op­er­a­tions in Trinidad,” the com­pa­ny had ex­plained.

The an­nounce­ment al­so sparked con­cerns over po­ten­tial job loss­es.

How­ev­er, the sit­u­a­tion shift­ed dra­mat­i­cal­ly fol­low­ing an emer­gency meet­ing yes­ter­day in­volv­ing key stake­hold­ers, with a res­o­lu­tion lead­ing to Nu­trien with­draw­ing its ap­pli­ca­tion for an in­ter­im in­junc­tion against the NEC, which it had filed the day be­fore.

Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials in­di­cat­ed that all par­ties are com­mit­ted to mov­ing for­ward col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly, as they reached an in­ter­im agree­ment al­low­ing Nu­trien un­in­hib­it­ed ac­cess to the port fa­cil­i­ties un­til De­cem­ber 31.

This was con­firmed by at­tor­ney Ger­ald Ramdeen, NGC’s chair­man, who told Guardian Me­dia the NEC was served with an ap­pli­ca­tion for an in­junc­tion by Nu­trien ear­ly yes­ter­day. How­ev­er, he said, fol­low­ing a high-lev­el meet­ing in­volv­ing key stake­hold­ers, in­clud­ing him­self, NEC di­rec­tor Dr Ram­per­sad Moti­lal; NGC act­ing pres­i­dent Ed­mund Sub­ryan, Nu­trien vice-pres­i­dent and man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Ed­mond Thomp­son, and Nu­trien se­nior vice-pres­i­dent of Ni­tro­gen Op­er­a­tions Dean Perkins, it was then agreed Nu­trien would not pro­ceed with the in­junc­tion.

Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan, for­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter and in­dus­try ex­pert, un­der­scored the im­por­tance of the res­o­lu­tion.

“Com­pa­nies like Nu­trien are vi­tal to the petro­chem­i­cal sec­tor and the wider econ­o­my. Our ob­jec­tive must be to re­store them to op­ti­mum ca­pac­i­ty to boost for­eign ex­change earn­ings and pro­tect jobs,” she said.

“Every time pro­duc­tion is cut, the work­force is af­fect­ed. These com­pa­nies sup­port a wide range of pro­fes­sions—from en­gi­neer­ing and IT to ac­count­ing and man­age­ment.”

What hap­pens af­ter De­cem­ber 31?  

Ramdeen not­ed that all par­ties have agreed to en­ter in­to ne­go­ti­a­tions, with sev­er­al out­stand­ing is­sues still to be ad­dressed. He em­pha­sised the Gov­ern­ment’s com­mit­ment to re­solv­ing these mat­ters in a time­ly and con­struc­tive man­ner.

“And there­fore, in our meet­ing this morn­ing, we in­di­cat­ed that we’ve of­fered to start those ne­go­ti­a­tions as soon as next week to be able to re­solve those is­sues... All of the com­pa­nies on the Point Lisas Es­tate, which the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny treats with, are im­por­tant to the econ­o­my of Trinidad and To­ba­go. And what is most im­por­tant is that the busi­ness of the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny and the sub­sidiary com­pa­nies are run in such a man­ner that it brings the best re­turns to the peo­ple of this coun­try,” Ramdeen said.

Speak­ing on the is­sue of NGC en­gag­ing Pro­man - glob­al leader in methanol, fer­tilis­er, and oth­er prod­ucts - re­gard­ing port fees, Ramdeen said the Gov­ern­ment is open to dis­cus­sions with all users of the NEC fa­cil­i­ties and all cus­tomers of the NGC.

He said this en­gage­ment is deemed nec­es­sary be­cause sev­er­al con­tracts are due to ex­pire at the end of this year, adding the goals of these dis­cus­sions are to en­sure the coun­try’s busi­ness runs ef­fi­cient­ly and that the com­pa­nies de­liv­er the best re­turn to the peo­ple of T&T.
Fur­ther­more, in line with the Gov­ern­ment’s pol­i­cy, Ramdeen said they are ac­tive­ly work­ing to make the Point Lisas Es­tate as at­trac­tive as pos­si­ble to all in­vestors.