An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

Chair­man of the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go (NGC), Ger­ald Ramdeen, says the state-owned nat­ur­al gas ag­gre­ga­tor is ne­go­ti­at­ing high­er prices with its down­stream cus­tomers and ex­pects to con­clude those agree­ments with­in the next month.

Ramdeen made the com­ment yes­ter­day at the Hy­att Re­gency, fol­low­ing the sign­ing of con­tracts with up­stream pro­duc­er Peren­co T&T Ltd to re­new sales con­tracts for the sup­ply of gas from the 2C and 3A off­shore blocks.

Asked whether NGC was in­creas­ing the price of nat­ur­al gas to the down­stream petro­chem­i­cal sec­tor as well, Ramdeen said the sign­ing of the con­tracts with Peren­co sig­nalled the clo­sure of nat­ur­al gas sup­ply arrange­ments with the up­stream com­pa­nies.

“We now have cer­tain­ty on the up­stream, so that we can of­fer gas at a price, a term and a vol­ume that we are con­fi­dent we will not be tak­ing a hedge,” said Ramdeen. He said the pre­vi­ous board of NGC ex­posed the com­pa­ny to sig­nif­i­cant fi­nan­cial risk through hedg­ing arrange­ments linked to sup­ply un­cer­tain­ty.
“At one point in time, you had the for­mer min­is­ter of en­er­gy telling you that the NGC was faced with $6 bil­lion in claims be­cause of the hedge and the risk that they were tak­ing,” he said. “So this board that I lead took the de­ci­sion to en­sure that we have cer­tain­ty of term, cer­tain­ty of price and cer­tain­ty of vol­ume,” claim­ing that the pre­vi­ous NGC board hedged the sup­ply of gas to the down­stream sec­tor.

Asked about the vol­ume of gas ex­pect­ed from the two off­shore blocks, Ramdeen de­clined to dis­close specifics, cit­ing con­fi­den­tial­i­ty claus­es em­bed­ded in the nat­ur­al gas sup­ply con­tracts.

“The dif­fi­cul­ty in an­swer­ing these ques­tions… is that al­most every sin­gle gas sup­ply con­tract is cov­ered by a non-dis­clo­sure agree­ment,” he said, not­ing that par­tial dis­clo­sure could breach le­gal oblig­a­tions and un­der­mine the po­si­tion of the par­ties in­volved.

But NGC’s act­ing pres­i­dent, Ed­mund Sub­ryan, said the nat­ur­al gas pro­duced by the two fields—plus a third field, the agree­ment for which was signed late last year—rep­re­sents a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of the com­pa­ny’s up­stream sup­ply, be­tween 20 and 25 per cent. The lat­est pub­lished da­ta for up­stream pro­duc­tion of nat­ur­al gas in T&T in­di­cates an av­er­age of 2.57 bil­lion stan­dard cu­bic feet was pro­duced be­tween Jan­u­ary and Au­gust 2025.

In Oc­to­ber last year, Cana­di­an down­stream pro­duc­er of am­mo­nia and urea, Nu­trien, com­menced a con­trol shut­down of its fa­cil­i­ties at the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate, com­plain­ing about “a lack of re­li­able and eco­nom­ic nat­ur­al gas sup­ply that has re­duced the free cash flow con­tri­bu­tion of the Trinidad ni­tro­gen op­er­a­tions over an ex­tend­ed pe­ri­od of time.”

Ramdeen al­so de­fend­ed NGC’s de­ci­sion to in­crease the price of nat­ur­al gas to its light in­dus­tri­al and com­mer­cial cus­tomers (LICs), in­sist­ing it could not con­tin­ue sell­ing gas be­low its ac­qui­si­tion cost.

“It might sound like par­lour eco­nom­ics, but we took a de­ci­sion at the board to not sell be­low our ac­qui­si­tion cost, and it was in the ex­e­cu­tion of that de­ci­sion by the board of the NGC that the com­mer­cial teams at the NGC had to ne­go­ti­ate with the LIC cus­tomers to charge a re­al­is­tic price of gas,” Ramdeen said.

He added that when the cur­rent board as­sumed of­fice, it en­coun­tered what he de­scribed as a heav­i­ly sub­sidised pric­ing struc­ture for the LICs.

“The price of gas to the LICs that was be­ing of­fered be­fore this present board was there. What we met when we came in, was a sit­u­a­tion where the gas price that was be­ing of­fered to the LIC was high­ly sub­sidised,” he said.

The in­crease in nat­ur­al gas prices is al­ready fil­ter­ing through the econ­o­my. Trinidad Ce­ment Lim­it­ed (TCL) has an­nounced a 15 per cent rise in the price of its ce­ment bags, cit­ing high­er in­put costs, in­clud­ing en­er­gy.

“And not on­ly was it high­ly sub­sidised, but take for ex­am­ple, TCL, which is not re­al­ly an LIC cus­tomer, be­cause they use be­tween 12 and 15 mil­lion stan­dard cu­bic feet of gas per day. In the last 48 months, TCL has in­creased the price of ce­ment to the cit­i­zens of this coun­try by over 40 per cent and they are propos­ing that we should in­crease the price of gas by four per cent. I can’t see how that could be eco­nom­i­cal or fair to the cit­i­zens of the coun­try,” said Ramdeen.

He main­tained that the cur­rent NGC board’s ap­proach is root­ed in com­mer­cial dis­ci­pline and risk man­age­ment.

Ramdeen al­so used the oc­ca­sion to re­flect on a missed strate­gic op­por­tu­ni­ty. He re­vealed that near­ly one year ago, the NGC had the abil­i­ty to ac­quire the as­sets now held by Peren­co but re­lin­quished that right.

“One of the most trou­bling things that I have had to con­front at the NGC is, as we sign these con­tracts to­day… one year ago, al­most one year ago, the NGC had the abil­i­ty to own those as­sets, and we gave up that right to own those as­sets,” he said.

“Those as­sets that are in the hands of Peren­co to­day could have been in the hands of the NGC.”
He at­trib­uted the out­come in part to sus­tained pub­lic crit­i­cism of the NGC, its board, and the min­istry at the time, de­scrib­ing the de­vel­op­ment as un­for­tu­nate. How­ev­er, he urged stake­hold­ers to fo­cus on what he char­ac­terised as a mile­stone in se­cur­ing up­stream sup­ply sta­bil­i­ty.
“I want us to cel­e­brate this mo­ment, this achieve­ment,” Ramdeen said, thank­ing those in­volved in con­clud­ing the agree­ments.