Alexander: Three investors ready to buy Nutrien plant

Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­[email protected]

Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Hous­ing Phillip Ed­ward Alexan­der says he is not par­tic­u­lar­ly both­ered by the shut­down of Nu­trien’s ni­tro­gen op­er­a­tions at Point Lisas, ar­gu­ing that he still be­lieves the coun­try is in a “good place” in terms of its en­er­gy sec­tor. He claims that three en­ti­ties have al­ready reached out, show­ing in­ter­est in ac­quir­ing the busi­ness.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia as he ar­rived to at­tend a sit­ting of the Sen­ate yes­ter­day, Alexan­der said he was con­fi­dent in the abil­i­ty of the Gov­ern­ment to nav­i­gate any un­cer­tain­ty, not­ing that there was still “hope” for de­vel­op­ment and growth in en­er­gy.

While he did not iden­ti­fy those who ex­pressed in­ter­est in ac­quir­ing the com­plex, Alexan­der said such re­spons­es from pri­vate in­vestors were in­di­ca­tors of how well the coun­try’s eco­nom­ic prospects were.

“We have at least three peo­ple reach out to me and say, ‘Aye, we ready to buy the plant,’ so I mean I know the ho­n­ourable (Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries) Roodal Mooni­lal, he’s on top of it.

“They have plans, they know where they are tak­ing us, our en­er­gy for­tunes are buoy­ant... the coun­try feels bet­ter, I think we’re in a good place and we’re go­ing for­ward.”

When asked to clar­i­fy if he was in con­tact with a po­ten­tial in­vestor, Alexan­der main­tained that he was con­tact­ed via text and sought ad­vice from Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries Dr Roodal Mooni­lal on how to pro­ceed.

In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Dr Mar­lene Attzs was ques­tioned on Nu­trien’s clo­sure as she ar­rived for the Sen­ate sit­ting. She said she hoped an ex­pla­na­tion would be of­fered by the com­pa­ny as to what led to the shut­down of op­er­a­tions.

Re­fer­ring to the read­ing of the Na­tion­al Bud­get on Mon­day, Attzs said the clo­sure of op­er­a­tions came at an “in­ter­est­ing time,” as the per­for­mance of the en­er­gy sec­tor and the avail­abil­i­ty of for­eign ex­change formed a crit­i­cal part of T&T’s fi­nan­cial man­age­ment.

“The bud­get usu­al­ly be­gins with a pre­am­ble about how the en­er­gy sec­tor is go­ing to con­tribute to gov­ern­ment’s rev­enues and you have a part­ner for about 30 years who has con­tributed par­tic­u­lar­ly in the down­stream sec­tor in terms of things like urea and am­mo­nia and would have con­tributed to our forex earn­ings, so I think that is an in­ter­est­ing talk­ing point to find out what has hap­pened and what is like­ly to be the out­put mov­ing for­ward giv­en that we are still heav­i­ly de­pen­dent on the en­er­gy sec­tor.”