Ke­jan Haynes

Lead Ed­i­tor news­gath­er­ing

ke­jan.haynes@guardian.co.tt

Em­ploy­ees at Nu­trien’s Trinidad and To­ba­go op­er­a­tions re­ceived a tem­po­rary re­prieve yes­ter­day, af­ter the com­pa­ny con­firmed that no ter­mi­na­tion let­ters would be is­sued and in­struct­ed staff to re­port to work as usu­al.

Guardian Me­dia had pre­vi­ous­ly re­port­ed that em­ploy­ees could have re­ceived ter­mi­na­tion no­tices yes­ter­day. How­ev­er, the com­pa­ny has since walked back that po­si­tion, con­firm­ing that work­ers will re­main em­ployed for now de­spite the con­tin­ued shut­down of its op­er­a­tions.

In an in­ter­nal let­ter cir­cu­lat­ed to staff, Nu­trien vice pres­i­dent and man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Ed­mond Thomp­son told em­ploy­ees that their terms and con­di­tions re­main un­changed and that they should con­tin­ue re­port­ing for du­ty.

“Our ni­tro­gen op­er­a­tions re­main shut down, and all op­tions re­main un­der con­sid­er­a­tion. In the mean­time, em­ploy­ees’ terms and con­di­tions re­main un­changed, and em­ploy­ees should re­port to work as usu­al,” Thomp­son wrote.

He said the com­pa­ny was en­gaged in dis­cus­sions “in good faith and with in­tegri­ty” to find a long-term so­lu­tion, adding that fur­ther up­dates would be pro­vid­ed as more in­for­ma­tion be­comes avail­able.

While no new pro­duc­tion is tak­ing place, Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that work is con­tin­u­ing at the Point Lisas fa­cil­i­ty to main­tain the ba­sic op­er­abil­i­ty of the plant.

In­dus­try sources es­ti­mate it is cost­ing the com­pa­ny ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$2 mil­lion per month to re­tain staff dur­ing the shut­down.

The de­vel­op­ment of­fers short-term re­lief for work­ers, who had been brac­ing for job loss­es fol­low­ing the ex­pi­ra­tion of Nu­trien’s gas sup­ply arrange­ments at the end of 2025.

The sit­u­a­tion fol­lows a pub­lic dis­pute be­tween Nu­trien and the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go Ltd (NGC), which ac­cused the Cana­di­an fer­tilis­er pro­duc­er of act­ing in its own com­mer­cial in­ter­ests and re­ject­ed claims that Gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy or NGC’s chair­man forced the com­pa­ny’s ex­it af­ter 45 years in T&T.

NGC con­firmed that Nu­trien was for­mal­ly no­ti­fied that all gas me­ter runs to its Point Lisas fa­cil­i­ty would be iso­lat­ed from Jan­u­ary 1, 2026, fol­low­ing the ex­piry of its gas con­tract.

The no­tice al­so in­di­cat­ed that the com­pa­ny would lose ac­cess to Na­tion­al En­er­gy’s Savone­ta Pier, ef­fec­tive­ly end­ing any re­main­ing abil­i­ty to op­er­ate.

NGC fur­ther warned that fail­ure to sub­mit a pro­pos­al by De­cem­ber 31 to set­tle what it de­scribed as out­stand­ing port user fees would be treat­ed as con­fir­ma­tion that Nu­trien no longer wished to op­er­ate in T&T.

NGC has claimed the com­pa­ny owes ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$28 mil­lion in back­dat­ed port fees. Nu­trien has de­nied ow­ing any­thing, since all its in­voic­es were paid.

The shut­down has left hun­dreds of work­ers in lim­bo. About 400 per­ma­nent em­ploy­ees and rough­ly 100 con­trac­tors re­main at­tached to the op­er­a­tion, while ap­prox­i­mate­ly 350 con­tract work­ers were sent home on Oc­to­ber 25, 2025.

“We recog­nise this is an un­cer­tain time and want to as­sure you that we are do­ing every­thing pos­si­ble to es­tab­lish a clear path for­ward,” Thomp­son wrote in his in­ter­nal let­ter.