Bavi­ta Gopaulchan

De­spite mak­ing a loss last year, the Chair­man of the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (NGC) be­lieves the com­pa­ny is do­ing well.

The state-owned com­pa­ny lost $316.2 mil­lion for the first six months of the 2020 fi­nan­cial year, how­ev­er dur­ing a Pub­lic Ac­counts (En­ter­pris­es) Com­mit­tee (PAEC) meet­ing yes­ter­day, NGC Chair­man, Con­rad Enill, de­fend­ed the com­pa­ny’s per­for­mance. He in­di­cat­ed that there were fac­tors out­side man­age­ment’s con­trol that con­tributed to its in­abil­i­ty to make a prof­it last year. These fac­tors, Enill said in­clud­ed the is­sue of sub­si­dized gas and a $5.6 bil­lion dol­lar debt by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­pa­ny (T&TEC).

“If you take out those things, not un­der man­age­ment con­trol, NGC would have made a prof­it”, Enill ex­claimed.

“So, the fear that the or­ga­ni­za­tion is some­how or the oth­er is not do­ing well is not true”, he stat­ed.

The com­pa­ny's chair­man al­so not­ed that the volatil­i­ty of com­mod­i­ty prices on in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets was al­so to be blamed for NGC's 2020 per­for­mance which have been low due to low­er glob­al en­er­gy con­sump­tion . The COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, he not­ed, had al­so ex­ac­er­bat­ed chal­lenges but as­sured that hope is on the hori­zon.

“On the ba­sis of what we have seen in 2020 and on the ba­sis of what we have seen in 2021, we be­lieve that in the very short term, the NGC will con­tin­ue to get back to its for­mer state where it will con­tribute pos­i­tive­ly to the Trinidad and To­ba­go rev­enue and what we are ask­ing at this point in time is that all play­ers hold on for a lit­tle bit longer as we go through this in­ter­ven­ing pe­ri­od”, ac­cord­ing to Enill.

He ex­pects an im­prove­ment in the com­pa­ny in the next 12 to 24 months. This as he not­ed the com­pa­ny has been mak­ing long-term in­vest­ments to help sup­port the gas sup­ply short­fall as well as pur­chas­ing as­sets.

“One of the oth­er is­sues which arise is that we will need the sup­port of the gov­ern­ment as so far as leg­is­la­tion is con­cerned to help with the process and I am very sure that Min­is­ter Khan and oth­ers will be look­ing at that”, Enill said.

PAEC mem­ber, Fitzger­ald Hinds, asked the com­pa­ny to ad­dress the pub­lic’s con­cerns sur­round­ing the clo­sure of the Yara am­mo­nia plant in 2019 and Methanex Cor­po­ra­tion’s move to idle op­er­a­tions at its Ti­tan plant. Hinds told the com­pa­ny there was the per­cep­tion that these clo­sures were an in­dict­ment on both the com­pa­ny and the gov­ern­ment.

How­ev­er, NGC’s Pres­i­dent, Mark Lo­quan, sought to ex­plain that clo­sures were al­so be­ing ex­pe­ri­enced in oth­er parts of the world.

“Not on­ly in Trinidad but, you see it al­so in oth­er parts of the world as has hap­pened be­fore you will see the small­er, in­ef­fi­cient plants com­ing out… that is not a blot against NGC. The land­scape has changed and there is no ques­tion about it”, Lo­quan in­sist­ed.

He fur­ther ex­plained, “The Yara plant for in­stance came out in 2019. That was in com­par­i­son to many plants in the lo­cal land­scape as well as the in­ter­na­tion­al land­scape that has one of the small­est pro­duc­tions and high­ly in­ef­fi­cient plants. In oth­er words, it took a lot of en­er­gy com­pared to an­oth­er plant to make one ton of am­mo­nia”.

Mean­while, NGC Pres­i­dent stat­ed that the com­pa­ny has im­ple­ment­ed “ a much more rigid method­ol­o­gy” to as­sess projects be­fore mon­ey is in­vest­ed, hav­ing learnt from its in­vest­ment in the bil­lion-dol­lar Beetham Waste­Water Treat­ment Plant. Go­ing for­ward, Lo­quan said the com­pa­ny will be stick­ing to its core busi­ness