Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Pointe-a-Pierre, Dr David Lee, says the move by Pro­man to shut down two of its plants is a di­rect re­sult of the in­com­pe­tence of the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion—most es­pe­cial­ly, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Franklin Khan.  He called for the Min­is­ter to re­sign.

Ear­li­er to­day, Pro­man Trinidad and To­ba­go is­sued a re­lease stat­ing that it had no choice but to leave idle two of its Methanol plants—the M4 and M5000 plants—ef­fec­tive im­me­di­ate­ly.  The com­pa­ny in­di­cat­ed that its M2 and M3 plants will con­tin­ue run­ning on De­N­o­vo gas on­ly.

In a state­ment is­sued to­day not long af­ter the Pro­man an­nounce­ment, the Op­po­si­tion MP says the Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion “con­tin­ues to fail, de­stroy and dec­i­mate the en­er­gy sec­tor”.

“The star­tling rev­e­la­tion by Pro­man's Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor that the sig­nif­i­cant in­crease in NGC gas pric­ing for April made their M4 and M500 plants eco­nom­i­cal­ly un­sus­tain­able, shows how our en­er­gy sec­tor has be­come un­com­pet­i­tive as well as less pro­duc­tive un­der this Gov­ern­ment,” said Dr Lee, who is the Shad­ow Min­is­ter of En­er­gy.

“These shut­downs, like the oth­er ma­jor petro­chem­i­cal plant shut­downs in the past months, are a di­rect re­sult of this ad­min­is­tra­tion's failed Hous­ton gas price ne­go­ti­a­tions as well as their thor­ough in­abil­i­ty to ad­dress the gas short­age,” he added. 

The Op­po­si­tion MP ar­gues that Gov­ern­ment can­not lay the blame for this lat­est de­vel­op­ment on COVID-19 or glob­al en­er­gy mar­ket con­di­tions.

“Since 2017, we have seen ma­jor petro­chem­i­cal plants shut­down with gi­ants such as YARA clos­ing down in 2019, all be­cause of the un­at­trac­tive con­di­tions cre­at­ed by this gov­ern­ment,” Dr Lee said.  “How can we have con­fi­dence in a Min­is­ter who said the en­er­gy sec­tor is in a good po­si­tion, yet weeks lat­er, a com­pa­ny that has of­fered over 30 years' ser­vice to this na­tion has had to idle two key plants?” 

The Shad­ow En­er­gy Min­is­ter says Gov­ern­ments han­dling of the gas cri­sis in the down­stream sec­tor has been ir­re­spon­si­ble, and he ques­tioned re­cent pol­i­cy de­ci­sions made.

He stat­ed: “It is damn­ing and detri­men­tal to the eco­nom­ic well-be­ing of our na­tion that the gas sup­ply of a com­pa­ny like Pro­man which has gen­er­at­ed mil­lions in rev­enue, forex as well as cre­at­ed hun­dreds of jobs in the past would be hin­dered, yet Ni­quan a com­pa­ny that has no in­dus­try track record and is re­port­ed­ly strug­gling to meet its pro­duc­tion tar­gets has been giv­en a guar­an­teed sup­ply of gas.” 

The Pointe-a-Pierre MP says Min­is­ter Khan must be re­lieved of his post, oth­er­wise the coun­try with see “a cat­a­stroph­ic col­lapse of our en­er­gy sec­tor be­yond the point of no re­turn”.