Moonilal says discussions still underway: Government not closing door on Nutrien

KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.fem­[email protected]

Just as Nu­trien moves to shut down its Point Lisas op­er­a­tions, leav­ing al­most 350 work­ers fac­ing re­trench­ment, the Gov­ern­ment says it is still try­ing to find a fu­ture for the com­plex.

En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal said the Gov­ern­ment was con­tin­u­ing dis­cus­sions with Nu­trien and had not ruled out op­tions.

“I’ve been in touch with Nu­trien yes­ter­day (Mon­day), and I will be in touch with Nu­trien lat­er to­day (Tues­day) as well, so that we are not, you know, we are not clos­ing the door on any mat­ter in­volv­ing that com­plex,” Mooni­lal said.

He spoke to re­porters at UTT’s Point Lisas Cam­pus yes­ter­day, where he de­liv­ered the fea­ture ad­dress at the launch of Pow­er­Gen’s Na­tion­al Schools’ De­bate Com­pe­ti­tion.

His com­ments came a day af­ter Nu­trien in­formed work­ers it would be­gin cut­ting jobs as it moves to wind down its ni­tro­gen busi­ness in Trinidad.

Nu­trien be­gan a con­trolled shut­down of its Point Lisas op­er­a­tions last year, cit­ing re­strict­ed port ac­cess and a lack of re­li­able and eco­nom­i­cal­ly vi­able nat­ur­al gas. The com­pa­ny op­er­ates four plants at the com­plex, with a com­bined name­plate am­mo­nia ca­pac­i­ty of 1.79 mil­lion tonnes.

The shut­down has raised ques­tions about the fu­ture of work­ers, the plants and the wider down­stream sec­tor, par­tic­u­lar­ly giv­en the im­por­tance of nat­ur­al gas to T&T’s petro­chem­i­cal in­dus­try.

Mooni­lal said work­ers had con­tin­ued re­port­ing for du­ty de­spite the de­vel­op­ments sur­round­ing the com­pa­ny.

“I just want­ed to re­mind you that work­ers re­port­ed for du­ty yes­ter­day (Mon­day) at Nu­trien. You won’t be­lieve it, but they re­port­ed this morn­ing (Tues­day) as well for du­ty at Nu­trien. So the work­ers are not home. They are em­ployed at this mo­ment.”

The min­is­ter stressed that the Gov­ern­ment was still talk­ing with Nu­trien about what could hap­pen at the com­plex.

“We are in dis­cus­sions with Nu­trien, even at this time, look­ing at the sit­u­a­tion to see, you know, what fu­ture in­vest­ment we could look at, what, you know, what is on the ta­ble for us to ex­am­ine or re-ex­am­ine as the case may be.”

The dis­cus­sions come against the back­drop of pre­vi­ous in­di­ca­tions that Nu­trien was speak­ing with po­ten­tial pur­chasers about the plant and its op­er­a­tions. Among those men­tioned was the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny. Mooni­lal said he had not heard that any sale had been con­clud­ed, leav­ing the sta­tus of any po­ten­tial trans­ac­tion un­re­solved.

“I have not seen or heard any­thing on that mat­ter to sug­gest that it has been con­clud­ed. So we’ll have our dis­cus­sions, but we are talk­ing to Nu­trien, and we’ll see how that goes.”

Mooni­lal said the Gov­ern­ment recog­nised the im­por­tance of the fa­cil­i­ty not on­ly to T&T but al­so to the wider re­gion. The ques­tion of gas sup­ply re­mains cen­tral to the fu­ture of the down­stream sec­tor.

Mooni­lal said the Gov­ern­ment was work­ing on sev­er­al de­vel­op­ments in­tend­ed to in­crease the coun­try’s gas sup­ply, in­clud­ing Drag­on, Lo­ran and Man­a­tee. He point­ed to the Man­a­tee project as one of the de­vel­op­ments be­ing ad­vanced, not­ing that the jack­et had been pro­duced in Trinidad at La Brea by Tof­co while the top­side came from Mex­i­co.

The Gov­ern­ment is al­so seek­ing to se­cure suf­fi­cient gas for ex­ist­ing and pro­posed down­stream in­dus­tries, in­clud­ing the steel in­dus­try and planned da­ta cen­tres. Mooni­lal said ad­di­tion­al gas sup­plies would give the Gov­ern­ment greater scope to ne­go­ti­ate longer-term arrange­ments with down­stream­ers.

He said the Gov­ern­ment was al­so await­ing in­for­ma­tion from Exxon­Mo­bil fol­low­ing its seis­mic pro­gramme.

The min­is­ter ac­knowl­edged that bring­ing ma­jor en­er­gy projects to fruition would take time, re­quir­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions, tech­ni­cal work, pro­cure­ment and le­gal and com­mer­cial arrange­ments. He said the Gov­ern­ment was work­ing with those con­straints while seek­ing to ad­vance the projects.

Mooni­lal al­so dis­closed that the Gov­ern­ment is prepar­ing to is­sue a re­quest for pro­pos­als for the for­mer Petrotrin re­fin­ery.

He said sig­nif­i­cant tech­ni­cal work had al­ready been done to pre­pare the re­fin­ery process.