Ke­jan Haynes

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

ke­jan.haynes@guardian.co.tt

For­mer prime min­is­ter and for­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Stu­art Young has crit­i­cised the Gov­ern­ment over the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny’s (NGC) de­ci­sion to cut gas sup­ply to fer­tilis­er pro­duc­er Nu­trien, warn­ing of po­ten­tial loss­es to for­eign ex­change earn­ings, jobs and Trinidad and To­ba­go’s in­ter­na­tion­al rep­u­ta­tion.

In a state­ment is­sued at the start of the new year, Young said the de­vel­op­ment re­flect­ed what he de­scribed as the Gov­ern­ment’s broad­er ap­proach to man­ag­ing the en­er­gy sec­tor.

“This is how Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and her in­com­pe­tent and ig­no­rant bunch start Trinidad and To­ba­go’s new year,” Young said.

“The de­struc­tion of our en­er­gy sec­tor is tak­ing place in record time un­der the UNC. This is a con­se­quence of wrong choice. Loss of forex, jobs and rep­u­ta­tion.”

Young ac­cused En­er­gy Min­is­ter Roodal Mooni­lal of fail­ing to man­age the port­fo­lio and claimed that NGC chair­man Ger­ald Ramdeen was di­rect­ing key de­ci­sions.

“It is clear that Min­is­ter Mooni­lal is not on­ly com­plete­ly out of his depth as Min­is­ter of En­er­gy, but al­so that it is Ramdeen who is mak­ing the calls and de­stroy­ing the en­er­gy sec­tor through in­com­pe­tence and mis­man­age­ment of NGC,” Young said.

“The wor­ry­ing part of this is that the de­ci­sions the Gov­ern­ment is tak­ing are de­stroy­ing re­la­tion­ships, re­sult­ing in a loss of jobs, the coun­try’s rep­u­ta­tion and rev­enue, in­clud­ing crit­i­cal for­eign ex­change earn­ings.

“They have failed to ne­go­ti­ate a sin­gle gas sales con­tract, with all con­tracts—ex­cept one—now ex­pired.”

The com­ments fol­low con­fir­ma­tion that NGC is­sued for­mal no­tice to Nu­trien in­di­cat­ing that all gas me­ter runs to the com­pa­ny’s Point Lisas fa­cil­i­ty would be iso­lat­ed from Jan­u­ary 1, ef­fec­tive­ly cut­ting off gas sup­ply and ac­cess to port op­er­a­tions.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that Nu­trien’s gas sup­ply con­tract ex­pired on Jan­u­ary 1, af­ter which valves would be ful­ly shut.

The move would al­so re­move the com­pa­ny’s ac­cess to the port, elim­i­nat­ing any re­main­ing abil­i­ty to op­er­ate.

Guardian Me­dia has al­so learned that NGC warned Nu­trien that fail­ure to sub­mit a pro­pos­al to set­tle what it de­scribed as “out­stand­ing port user fees” by De­cem­ber 31 would be treat­ed as con­fir­ma­tion that the com­pa­ny no longer wished to op­er­ate in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

NGC has claimed Nu­trien owes US$28 mil­lion in back­dat­ed port fees. In cor­re­spon­dence, the com­pa­ny in­di­cat­ed that Nu­trien would be barred from ac­cess­ing Na­tion­al En­er­gy’s fa­cil­i­ties at the Savone­ta Pier once the dead­line passed and ad­vised the com­pa­ny to take steps to safe­guard its plant, equip­ment and per­son­nel ahead of the cut-off.

Nu­trien has re­ject­ed the claim of un­paid fees, say­ing it paid all port user in­voic­es is­sued to it, de­spite the port con­tract ex­pir­ing in 2019.

Guardian Me­dia sought re­spons­es from NGC and Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials but re­ceived no re­ply up to the time of pub­li­ca­tion.