Ke­jan Haynes 

De­spite re­ports that the dis­pute at Point Lisas had been re­solved, an in­ter­nal memo from Nu­trien shows the com­pa­ny has al­ready shut down its Trinidad op­er­a­tions and re­mains dis­sat­is­fied with the out­come of its talks with the Na­tion­al En­er­gy Cor­po­ra­tion (NEC).

Fol­low­ing a high-lev­el meet­ing in­volv­ing Nu­trien, the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC), and NEC, NGC agreed to with­draw its claim for US$28 mil­lion in retroac­tive port fees and re­open ac­cess to the port fa­cil­i­ties. Nu­trien had been prepar­ing to file an in­junc­tion but agreed to stand down af­ter the dis­cus­sions.

Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials have in­di­cat­ed that all par­ties are will­ing to move for­ward in the na­tion­al in­ter­est, and ef­forts are now be­ing made to restart the plant, though it may not be ful­ly op­er­a­tional by to­mor­row. How­ev­er, sources say the sit­u­a­tion is not yet ful­ly re­solved, as low gas sup­ply and high prices re­main on­go­ing chal­lenges. The com­pa­ny will al­so need to en­gage staff as part of the restart process.

But in an email sent to em­ploy­ees yes­ter­day, Nu­trien vice-pres­i­dent and man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Ed­mond Thomp­son con­firmed that “op­er­a­tions have now been safe­ly shut down,” fol­low­ing a meet­ing with NEC that failed to pro­duce what the com­pa­ny con­sid­ered “an eco­nom­i­cal­ly vi­able so­lu­tion.”

“We had hoped for a more pro­duc­tive out­come, how­ev­er, we have not reached an eco­nom­i­cal­ly vi­able so­lu­tion that would al­low us to restart op­er­a­tions,” he wrote.

The memo di­rect­ly con­trasts the Gov­ern­ment’s op­ti­mistic tone, with Thomp­son not­ing that while NEC had agreed to al­low port ac­cess through the end of the year, “the key is­sues re­main un­re­solved.” He cit­ed “mil­lions of dol­lars of retroac­tive and uni­lat­er­al­ly im­posed fees” and broad­er con­cerns about “the over­all eco­nom­ic vi­a­bil­i­ty of op­er­a­tions.”

Thomp­son al­so ref­er­enced “me­dia cov­er­age that mis­states as­pects of the sit­u­a­tion,” telling staff Nu­trien would con­tin­ue to pro­vide “ac­cu­rate and time­ly up­dates” in­ter­nal­ly.

“We recog­nise that this sit­u­a­tion is dif­fi­cult,” he said, adding that the de­ci­sion to shut down the plant “was not tak­en light­ly.”

The in­ter­nal com­mu­ni­ca­tion sug­gests that while the tem­po­rary port ac­cess agree­ment may have eased im­me­di­ate le­gal ten­sions, the broad­er dis­putes over cost, gas sup­ply, and long-term vi­a­bil­i­ty re­main far from set­tled.

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal has not re­spond­ed to re­quests for com­ment.