PM: Don’t blame us for Nutrien shutdown

Jesse Ramdeo and An­drea Perez-Sobers

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has de­fend­ed the Gov­ern­ment’s po­si­tion on the re­trench­ment of Nu­trien work­ers, in­sist­ing that the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) must act in the best in­ter­ests of its own work­force.

Her com­ments came as hun­dreds of Nu­trien em­ploy­ees were yes­ter­day in­formed that the re­trench­ment process was set to be­gin, near­ly a year af­ter the Cana­di­an fer­tilis­er gi­ant ini­ti­at­ed a con­trolled shut­down of its Point Lisas op­er­a­tions.

Asked by Guardian Me­dia about the im­pact of the lay­offs, Per­sad-Bisses­sar dis­tanced the Gov­ern­ment from the de­ci­sion.

“That is be­tween them and Nu­trien. It is Nu­trien who made the de­ci­sion to send them home,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.

The Prime Min­is­ter main­tained that NGC has a du­ty to make de­ci­sions that safe­guard its em­ploy­ees.

“NGC has to make de­ci­sions to en­sure NGC doesn’t have to send its work­ers home and NGC has done so,” said.

“The Gov­ern­ment re­spects the rights of both NGC and Nu­trien to run their busi­ness­es as they see fit.”

Nu­trien be­gan a con­trolled shut­down of its Trinidad ni­tro­gen op­er­a­tions on Oc­to­ber 23, 2025, cit­ing re­strict­ed ac­cess to port fa­cil­i­ties and an un­re­li­able and un­eco­nom­ic nat­ur­al gas sup­ply. About 350 con­tract work­ers were sent home with­in days of that an­nounce­ment, while per­ma­nent em­ploy­ees re­mained on the job.

By Jan­u­ary 2026, NGC no­ti­fied Nu­trien that the gas me­ters serv­ing its Point Lisas fa­cil­i­ty would be iso­lat­ed af­ter the com­pa­ny’s gas sup­ply arrange­ment ex­pired. At the time, rough­ly 400 per­ma­nent em­ploy­ees and 100 con­trac­tors re­mained at­tached to the op­er­a­tion.

Yes­ter­day, ap­prox­i­mate­ly 350 work­ers were no­ti­fied of im­pend­ing re­trench­ment as Nu­trien moved ahead with plans to shut down its Trinidad ni­tro­gen op­er­a­tions in­def­i­nite­ly, bring­ing months of un­cer­tain­ty over the fu­ture of the fa­cil­i­ty to a head.

The Prime Min­is­ter al­so dis­missed sug­ges­tions that Nu­trien’s de­par­ture re­flect­ed a fail­ure by Gov­ern­ment.

“Nu­trien has to run their busi­ness how they see fit to sat­is­fy their share­hold­ers. I have no prob­lem with their de­ci­sion to shut down their plants. I wish them the best.”

She ar­gued that NGC’s re­spon­si­bil­i­ty is to max­imise re­turns from the coun­try’s gas re­sources.

“NGC must run its busi­ness to en­sure the cit­i­zens of this coun­try get max­i­mum re­turn from gas sales.”

On the com­pa­ny’s pric­ing strat­e­gy, Per­sad-Bisses­sar de­clared: “NGC will no longer sell its gas at prices that are not ben­e­fi­cial to the com­pa­ny.”

She al­so re­ject­ed con­cerns that the clo­sure would have a sig­nif­i­cant im­pact on for­eign-ex­change earn­ings.

“As for for­eign ex­change, that will not be af­fect­ed. The gas will sim­ply go to an­oth­er plant or to AL­NG to be processed at prices ne­go­ti­at­ed by NGC.”

Seek­ing to re­as­sure the pub­lic, she added: “There is ab­solute­ly noth­ing for cit­i­zens to con­cern them­selves about.”

The de­vel­op­ment has in­ten­si­fied a po­lit­i­cal dis­pute over re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the clo­sure.

For­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Stu­art Young, in a so­cial me­dia post, ac­cused the Per­sad-Bisses­sar ad­min­is­tra­tion of mis­han­dling the en­er­gy sec­tor and warned that the Nu­trien shut­down would lead to job loss­es and re­duced for­eign-ex­change earn­ings.

Young ar­gued that the pre­vi­ous Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) ad­min­is­tra­tion had suc­cess­ful­ly bal­anced nat­ur­al gas sup­ply and de­mand while main­tain­ing the vi­a­bil­i­ty of the en­er­gy sec­tor. He al­so con­tend­ed that none of the gas projects now ex­pect­ed to ad­vance could be cred­it­ed to the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) ad­min­is­tra­tion.

But Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­spond­ed sharply to this.

“Stu­ar­ty had op­por­tu­ni­ties for ten years and failed at every one,” she said.

Turn­ing to Young’s po­lit­i­cal fu­ture, she added: “He should re­lax and en­joy his stint un­til 2030 when Pen­ny will kick him out of the Par­lia­ment.”

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal mean­while said Gov­ern­ment and NGC had been work­ing since Oc­to­ber 2025 to keep the Nu­trien fa­cil­i­ty op­er­a­tional.

Mooni­lal re­vealed that NGC had gone so far as to of­fer to pur­chase the PCS Ni­tro­gen com­plex and said restart­ing the plant re­mains a pri­or­i­ty, whether un­der Nu­trien or an­oth­er op­er­a­tor.

He al­so re­ject­ed claims that the shut­down re­sult­ed from a short­age of nat­ur­al gas, ar­gu­ing in­stead that Nu­trien’s de­ci­sion was dri­ven by its ef­forts to se­cure mar­gins ac­cept­able to share­hold­ers.

Mooni­lal ac­cused Young of hypocrisy, point­ing to a se­ries of in­dus­tri­al clo­sures dur­ing the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion, in­clud­ing Arcelor­Mit­tal Point Lisas and Cen­tral Trinidad Steel in 2016, the Petrotrin re­fin­ery in 2018, Yara Trinidad’s am­mo­nia plant in 2018, At­lantic LNG Train 1 in 2021 and the pro­longed idling of Methanex Ti­tan.

Com­ment­ing on the lat­est de­vel­op­ment, econ­o­mist Dr Jamelia Har­ris yes­ter­day warned that Nu­trien’s ex­it will have con­se­quences ex­tend­ing well be­yond the loss of a sin­gle plant.

“The ef­fects of Nu­trien leav­ing on the econ­o­my are quite clear. GDP will be im­pact­ed, peo­ple will be sent home and lose their jobs, and we will have a low­er ca­pac­i­ty to earn for­eign ex­change,” she said.

Har­ris al­so high­light­ed the scale of Nu­trien’s com­mit­ment to T&T, not­ing the com­pa­ny in­vest­ed US$130 mil­lion in 2024 to im­prove the ef­fi­cien­cy of its op­er­a­tions.

“A year lat­er in 2025, they were idling their plants,” she not­ed.

She said the clo­sure must al­so be viewed against the back­drop of wider chal­lenges fac­ing down­stream en­er­gy pro­duc­ers, in­clud­ing Methanex, as con­cerns per­sist about gas sup­ply and the long-term com­pet­i­tive­ness of the sec­tor.