Ramdeen announces probe into PPGPL’s US acquisitions

An in­ves­ti­ga­tion has be­gun in­to the op­er­a­tions of Phoenix Park Gas Proces­sors Ltd’s (PPG­PL) Unit­ed States sub­sidiaries, trig­ger­ing sus­pen­sions, a res­ig­na­tion, and a widen­ing probe in­to how share­hold­er funds were de­ployed in­to loss-mak­ing ven­tures over sev­er­al years.

That dis­clo­sure came from T&T NGL chair­man (TTNGL) Ger­ald Ramdeen, fol­low­ing a ques­tion posed by Busi­ness Guardian on whether Phoenix Park’s US sub­sidiaries are for sale, at the Hy­att Re­gency on Tues­day.

“There is an ac­tive in­ves­ti­ga­tion go­ing on in­to the op­er­a­tions of the Phoenix Park Unit­ed States sub­sidiaries,” Ramdeen stressed, sig­nalling that the mat­ter has al­ready es­ca­lat­ed be­yond in­ter­nal re­view. Three peo­ple have been the sub­ject of a sus­pen­sion. One per­son has re­signed, and the in­ves­ti­ga­tions at all lev­els are on­go­ing.”

Probe in­to failed in­vest­ments

The fo­cus of that in­ves­ti­ga­tion is stark. It ex­am­ines how funds held in trust for share­hold­ers were re­peat­ed­ly in­vest­ed “year on year” in­to en­ter­pris­es that failed to gen­er­ate re­turns. Ramdeen went fur­ther, re­veal­ing that those re­spon­si­ble lat­er ad­vanced a pro­pos­al for an ad­di­tion­al US$100 mil­lion to con­tin­ue along the same path.

“They brought a pro­pos­al to the cur­rent board ask­ing for US$100 mil­lion to con­tin­ue the lais­sez-faire, reck­less be­hav­iour that was there and con­tin­u­ing for the last four years,” he stat­ed. “And they were quick­ly shut down.”

Ramdeen’s re­fusal to be drawn on whether Phoenix Park’s US as­sets are be­ing pre­pared for sale added an­oth­er lay­er of un­cer­tain­ty. Pressed for a di­rect an­swer, he held his po­si­tion.

“I have an­swered that ques­tion. I will not be drawn in­to a po­si­tion where as a lawyer, not a se­nior coun­sel, I un­der­stand the con­se­quences of my state­ments to any­thing that may hap­pen in the fu­ture,” he stat­ed. “I will not com­pro­mise any­thing that may hap­pen and may re­sult in pub­lic state­ments be­ing per­ceived to be to the prej­u­dice of cer­tain peo­ple.”

In 2020, PPG­PL, through its whol­ly owned US sub­sidiary, Phoenix Park En­er­gy Mar­ket­ing LLC, ac­quired the nat­ur­al gas liq­uids (propane, bu­tane and nat­ur­al gaso­line) mar­ket­ing as­sets of Twin Ea­gle Liq­uids Mar­ket­ing LLC.

Twin Ea­gle Liq­uids Mar­ket­ing LLC is a com­pa­ny based in Hous­ton, Texas, and is en­gaged in the busi­ness of mar­ket­ing, trad­ing, and trans­porta­tion of nat­ur­al gas liq­uids in Cana­da, the US and Mex­i­co via rail.

In 2022, a US-reg­is­tered sub­sidiary of PPG­PL ac­quired nat­ur­al gas liq­uids ter­mi­nals in Hull, Texas and in Rush City, Min­neso­ta.

At the TTNGL an­nu­al meet­ing on March 5, Ramdeen said the PPG­PL’s three for­eign sub­sidiaries had racked up ac­cu­mu­lat­ed loss­es of over US$154 mil­lion ($1.04 mil­lion) since 2020.

At a news con­fer­ence on Tues­day, he said, “A bil­lion dol­lars that be­longed to PPG­PL and in­di­rect­ly that be­longed to the share­hold­ers of TTNGL was in­vest­ed, and the re­ward was a bil­lion-dol­lar loss,” he stat­ed, again re­fer­ring to the loss­es.

TTNGL, which is list­ed on the lo­cal stock mar­ket, owns 39 per cent of PPG­PL, its main as­set. Whol­ly state-owned NGC is the par­ent com­pa­ny of both TTNGL and PPG­PL.

For many of 11,500 share­hold­ers, the re­cent fail­ure by TTNGL to pay div­i­dends, has de­fined the com­pa­ny’s re­cent his­to­ry.

Div­i­dends, ex­pect­ed twice year­ly un­der TTNGL’s in­vest­ment pol­i­cy, have not been paid since Sep­tem­ber 2022. Ramdeen said that trans­lates in­to near­ly six missed cy­cles, a gap that has erod­ed con­fi­dence and in­ten­si­fied the scruti­ny of man­age­ment de­ci­sions.

Div­i­dend drought and de­layed ac­counts

Ramdeen framed the board’s re­sponse as an ur­gent in­ter­ven­tion aimed at restor­ing those pay­ments in the short­est pos­si­ble time. The de­ci­sion to pur­sue a cap­i­tal re­duc­tion, rather than tran­si­tion­ing share­hold­ers di­rect­ly in­to Phoenix Park eq­ui­ty, was pre­sent­ed as the most ef­fi­cient route.

“The sim­ple an­swer to that is that this was the quick­est way in which the 11, 500 share­hold­ers…could re­sume get­ting div­i­dends,” he ex­plained. “We con­sid­ered that the quick­est way to bring re­lief, hav­ing re­gard to the fact that these share­hold­ers had not re­ceived a sin­gle div­i­dend” in three years.

He stressed that the move was not di­rect­ed by the State but ap­proved unan­i­mous­ly by share­hold­ers at its an­nu­al meet­ing last month.

“The de­ci­sion that was tak­en was not a de­ci­sion tak­en by the Gov­ern­ment. It was a de­ci­sion tak­en by the share­hold­ers of TTNGL at the an­nu­al meet­ing when the spe­cial res­o­lu­tion was passed.”

Still, the ur­gency of that mea­sure re­flects the depth of the prob­lem. Ramdeen placed it in hu­man terms, point­ing to el­der­ly in­vestors who have been left wait­ing for the in­come tied to their shares.

“Can you imag­ine what it is like for an old woman, in her 80s, ask­ing why she hasn’t re­ceived her div­i­dends be­fore she dies?”

Be­hind that div­i­dend drought lies a chain of de­pen­den­cies that be­gins with Phoenix Park it­self. TTNGL’s fi­nan­cial per­for­mance is di­rect­ly tied to its share­hold­ing in the gas proces­sor, and de­lays at that lev­el have al­ready dis­rupt­ed re­port­ing time­lines.

TTNGL pres­i­dent Shel­don Sylvester ad­dressed the de­lay in the com­pa­ny’s 2025 an­nu­al re­port, which was due on March 1 but re­mains out­stand­ing.

“The fi­nan­cial state­ments for PPG­PL are de­layed, and as a con­se­quence of that de­lay, TTNGL’s fi­nan­cial state­ments are de­layed. Our ex­pec­ta­tion is by May 31, those state­ments should be pub­lished,” Sylvester not­ed.

For the nine-month pe­ri­od end­ed Sep­tem­ber 30, 2025, TTNGL re­port­ed prof­it af­ter tax of $63.75 mil­lion, rep­re­sent­ing a de­crease of 23 per cent, com­pared with the $82.77 mil­lion the com­pa­ny earned for the same pe­ri­od in 2024.

The re­duced earn­ings for the nine-month pe­ri­od pushed TTNGL’s earn­ings per share down to $0.41, from $0.53 record­ed in the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od a year ear­li­er. For the quar­ter end­ed Sep­tem­ber 30, 2025, TTNGL record­ed prof­it af­ter tax of $99.59 mil­lion, 175 per cent more than the $26.10 mil­lion the com­pa­ny record­ed for the same quar­ter in 2024.

Pro­cure­ment ques­tions deep­en con­cern

The is­sues raised dur­ing the news brief­ing were not con­fined to in­vest­ments and div­i­dends. Pro­cure­ment prac­tices, par­tic­u­lar­ly in re­la­tion to med­ical equip­ment, emerged as an­oth­er point of con­tention.

Ramdeen ad­dressed ques­tions sur­round­ing a do­na­tion linked to can­cer treat­ment equip­ment raised in Par­lia­ment. He in­di­cat­ed that the trans­ac­tion en­coun­tered by the cur­rent board was clos­er to US$2 mil­lion.

“I am aware that PPG­PL sought to pro­cure equip­ment for can­cer treat­ment and give it to one en­ti­ty,” he not­ed. “I don’t know how that was done. I don’t know how they chose the en­ti­ty. I don’t know how they came up with the fig­ure.”

The re­sponse from the cur­rent lead­er­ship was to shift re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for such de­ci­sions to the Min­istry of Health.

“We will give the do­na­tion in the same quan­ti­ty, but we will let the Min­istry of Health de­ter­mine how they want to take those funds and use them,” he ex­plained. “We are not best placed to know… what is best for the health sec­tor in T&T.”

In­for­ma­tion ob­tained by the Busi­ness Guardian from a source fa­mil­iar with the mat­ter sug­gests that the pro­cure­ment process sur­round­ing on­col­o­gy equip­ment may have been more prob­lem­at­ic than pub­licly out­lined.

The source de­scribed a sit­u­a­tion in which a di­rec­tive was is­sued to pur­sue equip­ment from a sup­pli­er based in Mi­a­mi, with in­struc­tions to pro­ceed with a pur­chase or­der val­ued at ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$2.2 mil­lion. Due dili­gence re­port­ed­ly re­vealed that the sup­pli­er’s ad­dress cor­re­spond­ed to a shell lo­ca­tion with no op­er­a­tional pres­ence, and that the equip­ment in ques­tion was re­fur­bished.

“When we checked the sup­pli­er, the ad­dress of the sup­pli­er was a shell build­ing in Mi­a­mi that had no­body present,” the source stat­ed. “It was re­fur­bished equip­ment. You could imag­ine push­ing re­fur­bished equip­ment to treat peo­ple for can­cer.”

Con­cerns were al­so raised about po­ten­tial breach­es of pro­cure­ment rules,” said the source, adding that a NGC of­fi­cial was ad­vised that it was a breach of the Pro­cure­ment Act for di­rec­tors to so­lic­it quo­ta­tions and in­struct com­pa­nies to ex­e­cute pur­chase or­ders.

The process was ul­ti­mate­ly halt­ed.

While these claims were not di­rect­ly ad­dressed dur­ing the me­dia con­fer­ence, they align with the broad­er nar­ra­tive of gov­er­nance laps­es now un­der ex­am­i­na­tion.

The con­ver­gence of these is­sues places TTNGL and PPG­PL at a crit­i­cal junc­ture. On one hand, there is grow­ing in­ter­na­tion­al in­ter­est in T&T’s en­er­gy sec­tor, dri­ven by shift­ing geopo­lit­i­cal dy­nam­ics and de­mand for al­ter­na­tive gas sup­plies.

“There are a num­ber of in­vestors, lo­cal, re­gion­al, and in­ter­na­tion­al, that are ex­cit­ed about what is hap­pen­ing in the en­er­gy sec­tor,” Ramdeen not­ed. “Up to this morn­ing, I was on the tele­phone with some­body from Eu­rope, six dif­fer­ent Eu­ro­pean coun­tries are seek­ing the pur­chase of LNG from Trinidad.”

Ramdeen sig­nalled that fu­ture in­vest­ment de­ci­sions will be sub­ject­ed to stricter scruti­ny.

“What­ev­er in­vest­ment de­ci­sions will not be made in a man­ner in which it was made be­fore,” he stat­ed.

“It will be care­ful­ly thought out, and the cor­rect due dili­gence will be done.”