National Energy still demanding port fees from Nutrien months after closure

Na­tion­al En­er­gy is still try­ing to col­lect mil­lions in dis­put­ed port fees from Cana­di­an fer­tilis­er gi­ant Nu­trien, even though the com­pa­ny’s Point Lisas ni­tro­gen plant has been shut down since Oc­to­ber last year.

Guardian Me­dia con­firmed through sources that a fresh let­ter was sent ear­li­er this month again de­mand­ing pay­ment of out­stand­ing port charges. This time, how­ev­er, the bill ap­pears to have been re­duced.

In­stead of the orig­i­nal US$28 mil­lion ( around TT$190 mil­lion ) Na­tion­al En­er­gy is now seek­ing TT$157 mil­lion, or rough­ly US$23 mil­lion, in fees dat­ing back to Sep­tem­ber last year.

In oth­er words, Na­tion­al En­er­gy now ap­pears will­ing to ac­cept the pay­ments clos­er to the old port rates Nu­trien had been pay­ing be­fore chair­man Ger­ald Ramdeen re­port­ed­ly in­creased the fees and at­tempt­ed to retroac­tive­ly ap­ply them.

Last week, Guardian Me­dia re­port­ed Nu­trien Ltd is ex­plor­ing the pos­si­ble sale of its Trinidad ni­tro­gen fa­cil­i­ty as part of a wider strate­gic re­view of un­der­per­form­ing as­sets.

Guardian Me­dia ob­tained an in­ter­nal memo cir­cu­lat­ed to staff fol­low­ing the com­pa­ny’s quar­ter­ly earn­ings re­lease and con­fer­ence call.

In the memo, Nu­trien Trinidad vice-pres­i­dent and man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Ed­mund Thomp­son con­firmed the com­pa­ny is re­view­ing “all strate­gic op­tions” for its Trinidad ni­tro­gen op­er­a­tions, in­clud­ing a po­ten­tial sale.

“As shared pub­licly, Nu­trien con­tin­ues to eval­u­ate all strate­gic op­tions for our Trinidad Ni­tro­gen op­er­a­tions. This re­view con­sid­ers a full range of al­ter­na­tives, in­clud­ing the ex­plo­ration of a po­ten­tial sale of the fa­cil­i­ty. There is no pre­de­ter­mined out­come, and no de­ci­sions have been made,” the memo stat­ed.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands Na­tion­al En­er­gy’s lat­est let­ter di­rect­ly ref­er­ences re­ports of a pos­si­ble di­vest­ment.

Ac­cord­ing to sources fa­mil­iar with the cor­re­spon­dence who were not au­tho­rised to speak pub­licly, the let­ter warns that any pur­chas­er of the fa­cil­i­ty would in­her­it the out­stand­ing port fees al­leged­ly owed by Nu­trien.

The two com­pa­nies have been locked in a stale­mate for months over the con­tro­ver­sial port charges, with Nu­trien main­tain­ing it has no in­ten­tion of pay­ing what in­sid­ers de­scribed as “ex­tor­tion-like” fees.

Nei­ther com­pa­ny of­fi­cial­ly com­ment­ed on the lat­est let­ter.

Na­tion­al En­er­gy told Guardian Me­dia: “Na­tion­al En­er­gy Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go Lim­it­ed (Na­tion­al En­er­gy) re­spects its du­ty of con­fi­den­tial­i­ty in re­la­tion to its com­mer­cial deal­ings. Your ques­tion in­vites Na­tion­al En­er­gy Cor­po­ra­tion to breach its con­fi­den­tial­i­ty oblig­a­tions to which it re­spect­ful­ly de­clines.”

Nu­trien did not re­spond to re­quests for com­ment.

The com­pa­ny shut down the Point Lisas ni­tro­gen fa­cil­i­ty on Oc­to­ber 23, 2025.

In its first-quar­ter 2026 fi­nan­cial re­port re­leased Wednes­day, Nu­trien con­firmed there has been “no pro­duc­tion from the Trinidad and New Madrid fa­cil­i­ties” since the con­trolled shut­down.

The com­pa­ny said it is “pro­gress­ing as planned with the re­view of strate­gic al­ter­na­tives for our phos­phate busi­ness, Trinidad ni­tro­gen fa­cil­i­ty, and Brazil­ian re­tail busi­ness with a fo­cus on en­hanc­ing earn­ings qual­i­ty and free cash flow.”

Nu­trien did not spec­i­fy what those al­ter­na­tives may in­volve, though such re­views of­ten in­clude pos­si­ble sales, re­struc­tur­ing, part­ner­ships, or per­ma­nent clo­sures.

De­spite the clo­sure of the Trinidad op­er­a­tion, Nu­trien still post­ed a sharp in­crease in first-quar­ter prof­its.