On two oc­ca­sions at a me­dia con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert opt­ed not to an­swer ques­tions on Ni­Quan En­er­gy.

“With re­spect to Ni­Quan, I know my place. I will stay in my sec­tion and I sug­gest you pose that ques­tion to the Min­is­ter of En­er­gy,” Mr Im­bert re­spond­ed when he was asked the ques­tion the first time. His re­sponse on the sec­ond oc­ca­sion was sim­i­lar.

While Min­is­ter of En­er­gy Stu­art Young may have min­is­te­r­i­al over­sight of Ni­Quan, which is a com­pa­ny in the en­er­gy sec­tor, as Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, Mr Im­bert serves as Cor­po­ra­tion Sole of T&T. That makes him re­spon­si­ble for all the as­sets owned by the State.

Those as­sets in­clude the pref­er­ence shares held by Petrotrin, which the whol­ly state-owned com­pa­ny re­ceived in lieu of the full pay­ment of US$35 mil­lion for the gas-to-liq­uids fa­cil­i­ty.

The as­sets of the State, for which Mr Im­bert bears some re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, in­clude the Trinidad and To­ba­go Up­stream Down­stream En­er­gy Op­er­a­tions Com­pa­ny Ltd, the whol­ly state-owned com­pa­ny that was spe­cial­ly set up to sup­ply nat­ur­al gas to the Ni­Quan project be­cause whol­ly state-owned Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny was fac­ing nat­ur­al gas cur­tail­ment claims of TT$4.6 bil­lion.

Apart from the agree­ment with Up­stream Down­stream, Ni­Quan al­so has an agree­ment to sup­ply its low-sul­phur diesel to Paria Fu­el Trad­ing, which is al­so whol­ly state-owned.

The ra­tio­nal ex­pla­na­tion for Mr Im­bert’s de­ci­sion to stay in his sec­tion on the Ni­Quan is­sue may be be­cause Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has di­rect­ed Mr Young to treat with the gas-to-liq­uids project.

But it was Dr Row­ley him­self who cut the rib­bon to sig­nal the open­ing of the project, which is lo­cat­ed on the com­pound of the now moth­balled re­fin­ery in Pointe-a-Pierre.

In his speech at the Ni­Quan rib­bon-cut­ting, it was the Prime Min­is­ter who de­scribed the un­der­tak­ing as a suc­cess and one wor­thy of be­ing com­mem­o­rat­ed, de­spite the fact that the project “was once plagued by de­lays and cost over­runs”.

It is ob­vi­ous that in March 2021, Dr Row­ley saw the pos­si­bil­i­ties of the Ni­Quan project and that he would have been in­stru­men­tal in con­vinc­ing Cab­i­net not to write it off as a “failed at­tempt ... (with) noth­ing to be had ex­cept per­ma­nent fi­nan­cial loss­es, fin­ger-point­ing and po­lit­i­cal grand­stand­ing”.

It is part of this project’s his­to­ry that about a month af­ter the rib­bon-cut­ting, there was a huge ex­plo­sion at the fa­cil­i­ty, which de­layed it com­mis­sion­ing by many months. It is al­so an as­pect of the his­to­ry that a work­er on the plant died in June in cir­cum­stances that still have not been ful­ly or even par­tial­ly ex­plained.

The cur­rent re­la­tion­ship be­tween Ni­Quan and the Gov­ern­ment is ac­ri­mo­nious with the com­pa­ny, in Au­gust, seek­ing an in­junc­tion to com­pel Up­stream Down­stream to sup­ply the project with nat­ur­al gas. That in­junc­tion, which was re­ject­ed by the High Court but is on ap­peal, came short­ly af­ter the gas sup­pli­er ter­mi­nat­ed its con­tract with Ni­Quan.

Cen­tral to the dis­pute be­tween the Gov­ern­ment and Ni­Quan is the sup­ply of nat­ur­al gas and pay­ment for the com­mod­i­ty.

The ques­tions the Cab­i­net need to an­swer is whether this gas-to-liq­uids project is worth at­tempt­ing to save and what will it take for it be sal­vaged.