Young defends Atlantic LNG deal as Iran tensions drive energy price outlook

As ris­ing ten­sions in­volv­ing Iran push glob­al oil and gas prices high­er, for­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Stu­art Young has de­fend­ed the At­lantic LNG re­struc­tur­ing, say­ing the coun­try is now po­si­tioned to ben­e­fit be­cause of de­ci­sions tak­en un­der the pre­vi­ous Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) gov­ern­ment.

In a state­ment is­sued to­day, Young said the De­cem­ber 2023 re­struc­tur­ing of At­lantic LNG (AL­NG) in­tro­duced a new pric­ing sys­tem that links Trinidad and To­ba­go’s gas sales to in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets in Asia, Eu­rope and oil prices, al­low­ing the coun­try to earn more when glob­al en­er­gy prices rise.

His com­ments come af­ter En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal said es­ca­lat­ing con­flict in the Mid­dle East could de­liv­er a po­ten­tial rev­enue wind­fall for Trinidad and To­ba­go, as in­sta­bil­i­ty threat­ens en­er­gy ship­ments through the Strait of Hor­muz, a key glob­al route for oil and liq­ue­fied nat­ur­al gas. Re­cent dis­rup­tions have al­ready pushed gas and oil prices up­ward amid fears of sup­ply short­ages.

Young ar­gued that the pric­ing struc­ture now be­ing cit­ed by the Gov­ern­ment as a ben­e­fit was ne­go­ti­at­ed dur­ing the PNM’s tenure fol­low­ing years of talks with en­er­gy com­pa­nies Shell and bp.

“In De­cem­ber 2023 we com­plet­ed the his­toric re­struc­tur­ing of At­lantic LNG,” Young said, adding that ne­go­ti­a­tions took ap­prox­i­mate­ly five years.

He said the agree­ment cre­at­ed a bas­ket pric­ing for­mu­la tied to Eu­ro­pean and Asian gas mar­kets as well as Brent oil prices. It al­so se­cured a 10 per cent share­hold­ing in AL­NG Trains 2 and 3 along with LNG car­go al­lo­ca­tions at no cost to cit­i­zens.

Young al­so crit­i­cised Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Mooni­lal, say­ing they had pre­vi­ous­ly op­posed the re­struc­tur­ing and ques­tioned of­fi­cial trav­el linked to ne­go­ti­a­tions in Hous­ton, Lon­don and The Hague.

He ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of now pro­mot­ing ben­e­fits aris­ing from an agree­ment it had ear­li­er crit­i­cised and de­scribed the re­struc­tur­ing as a ma­jor achieve­ment of the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion