For­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Stu­art Young is warn­ing that on­go­ing chal­lenges in the en­er­gy sec­tor could have far-reach­ing ef­fects on Trinidad and To­ba­go’s econ­o­my and rep­u­ta­tion if not care­ful­ly man­aged.

He said the im­passe be­tween the Na­tion­al En­er­gy Cor­po­ra­tion (NEC) and Nu­trien re­mains un­re­solved and is al­ready af­fect­ing the lo­cal sup­ply of car­bon diox­ide (CO₂), a key in­put for sev­er­al in­dus­tries, in­clud­ing the man­u­fac­tur­ing of car­bon­at­ed bev­er­ages. A pro­longed dis­rup­tion, he not­ed, could im­pact pro­duc­tion both lo­cal­ly and across the re­gion.

Young said the coun­try’s petro­chem­i­cal in­dus­try—cov­er­ing am­mo­nia, methanol and urea—op­er­ates on nar­row mar­gins and de­pends on sta­ble, pre­dictable pol­i­cy de­ci­sions to re­main com­pet­i­tive. He cau­tioned that un­cer­tain­ty sur­round­ing en­er­gy costs and port op­er­a­tions could in­flu­ence in­vest­ment de­ci­sions by multi­na­tion­al firms.

He added that the en­er­gy sec­tor con­tin­ues to be the coun­try’s largest source of for­eign ex­change and a ma­jor em­ploy­er, mak­ing sta­bil­i­ty and col­lab­o­ra­tion es­sen­tial.

“Our en­er­gy ecosys­tem is del­i­cate and re­quires care­ful man­age­ment to main­tain in­vestor con­fi­dence and pro­tect long-term sus­tain­abil­i­ty,” Young said.

On Tues­day, Nu­trien an­nounced that it would ini­ti­ate a con­trolled shut­down of the Point Lisas plant, start­ing to­day, cit­ing on­go­ing chal­lenges with port ac­cess re­stric­tions and un­re­li­able nat­ur­al gas sup­ply.