Energy Chamber warns of shutdown’s impact on jobs, exports, revenue

An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter
an­[email protected]

Nu­trien’s de­ci­sion to in­def­i­nite­ly shut down its ni­tro­gen op­er­a­tions at Point Lisas is ex­pect­ed to have far-reach­ing eco­nom­ic con­se­quences, with the En­er­gy Cham­ber of Trinidad and To­ba­go warn­ing of loss­es in jobs, ex­port earn­ings, for­eign ex­change and gov­ern­ment rev­enue.

In a state­ment is­sued to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, the cham­ber voiced con­cern over the clo­sure, which fol­lows the con­trolled shut­down of Nu­trien’s op­er­a­tions in late 2025.

Nu­trien’s lo­cal op­er­a­tions in­clud­ed four am­mo­nia plants with a com­bined pro­duc­tion ca­pac­i­ty of 1.8 mil­lion tonnes an­nu­al­ly and a urea plant ca­pa­ble of pro­duc­ing 600,000 tonnes a year.

The cham­ber said the im­pact will ex­tend be­yond the plant it­self, af­fect­ing con­trac­tors, sup­pli­ers and ser­vice providers in Point Lisas and neigh­bour­ing com­mu­ni­ties.

It warned that Trinidad and To­ba­go stands to lose valu­able ex­port earn­ings and for­eign ex­change at a time when both are al­ready un­der pres­sure. Gov­ern­ment tax rev­enues are al­so ex­pect­ed to de­cline.

The shut­down could car­ry longer-term costs as skilled work­ers leave the sec­tor, erod­ing spe­cialised ex­per­tise that may prove dif­fi­cult to re­place when nat­ur­al gas sup­plies im­prove.

The cham­ber fur­ther cau­tioned that the clo­sure could un­der­mine in­vestor con­fi­dence, in­flu­enc­ing how T&T is viewed as a des­ti­na­tion for fu­ture petro­chem­i­cal in­vest­ment.

While en­cour­aged by pro­jec­tions of an im­proved nat­ur­al gas out­look from 2028, the cham­ber said the pe­ri­od lead­ing up to that re­cov­ery will be chal­leng­ing and warned that any fur­ther idling of in­dus­tri­al ca­pac­i­ty could have se­ri­ous reper­cus­sions.

It urged Gov­ern­ment to con­tin­ue work­ing close­ly with up­stream and down­stream op­er­a­tors to se­cure re­li­able nat­ur­al gas sup­plies at glob­al­ly com­pet­i­tive prices. Main­tain­ing op­er­a­tions at ex­ist­ing plants and en­sur­ing idled fa­cil­i­ties are po­si­tioned for a restart when gas avail­abil­i­ty im­proves should re­main a pri­or­i­ty, it said.

The cham­ber al­so wel­comed re­cent ef­forts by the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny to se­cure ad­di­tion­al gas vol­umes from EOG’s Co­conut field for do­mes­tic use, as well as its in­vest­ment in the Man­akin project.

Mean­while, Greater San Fer­nan­do Area Cham­ber of Com­merce pres­i­dent Ki­ran Singh said the shut­down is like­ly to rip­ple through South Trinidad’s busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty.

“It’s a wor­ry­ing sit­u­a­tion that has arisen for us in South Trinidad. It will af­fect small busi­ness­es. All these work­ers, they tend to sup­port the re­tail sec­tor in par­tic­u­lar,” Singh told Guardian Me­dia.

He called on Gov­ern­ment to pro­vide re­as­sur­ance to work­ers, busi­ness­es and the wider pub­lic about its plans for the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate and the fu­ture di­rec­tion of the en­er­gy sec­tor.

Nu­trien be­gan a con­trolled shut­down of its Point Lisas fa­cil­i­ty on Oc­to­ber 23, 2025, cit­ing re­strict­ed ac­cess to port fa­cil­i­ties and the lack of a re­li­able and eco­nom­i­cal­ly priced nat­ur­al gas sup­ply. With­in days, ap­prox­i­mate­ly 350 con­tract work­ers were sent home, al­though per­ma­nent em­ploy­ees re­mained on the job.