Minister of Energy Stuart Young said bad deals made by the People's Partnership government in 2013 caused the National Gas Company (NGC) to lose money in 2024.
Young said the purchase of Phoenix Park Gas Processors Ltd (PPGPL) for $2.3 billion more than the fair market price and the acquisition of Caribbean Gas Chemicals Ltd shares resulted in NGC and the country taking a hit every time the two companies were valued lower than the price at which they were bought.
He made the statement during a press conference at the ministry’s head office in Port of Spain, on December 19.
He was speaking in defence of the current NGC chairman Dr Joseph Ishmael Khan who was targeted by opposition MP David Lee while speaking at a UNC cottage meeting at the party’s headquarters in Chaguanas on December 16.
On December 14, NGC released its financial results for 2023 which recorded a $1.3 billion loss for the year.
[caption id="attachment_1127680" align="alignnone" width="1024"] The NGC LNG carrier.Photo courtesy NGC - NGC[/caption]
"Mr David Lee saw it fit to personalise an attack on the chairman of NGC, Dr Joseph Khan. (But) absolutely no part of the losses incurred by the NGC group have anything to do with the current board of directors, the current management of NGC or the current government of TT.
"The losses of 2023 are solely attributable to a transaction in 2013, the acquisition of the shares of PPGPL from ConocoPhillips which were overvalued and one of the worst contracts a government could have entered into in the energy sector – CGCL, which will continue to cost us the citizens billions of dollars."
PPGPL is a TT-based gas processing company formed in 1989. NGC acquired a 39 per cent share of the company from ConocoPhillips for US$600 million in 2013.
The acquisition of the shares would have meant that NGC would have had control over 90 per cent of the company, with NGC NGL having control over 51 per cent of the company and NGC owning 39 per cent, under the direction of then energy minister Kevin Ramnarine.
In early 2015, the government announced it would be investing along with the Japanese-based Mitsubishi Corporation, Mitsubishi Gas Chemicals and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries in CGCL, a methanol-producing plant.
Young said when the PNM came into power in September 2015, they met the deal with CGCL all but done.
"All of the legal documentation had already been executed. There was only one outstanding item to complete the CGCL deal, which was a standard opinion given by the attorney general to the financiers, the Japan Bank for International Co-operation.
"The Prime Minister tasked me and the then attorney general with locating the file. When we did, the public servants had written on the file in red ink saying that they would not approve attorney general's opinion because the deal was not good."
He also found correspondence from the then NGC president to Ramnarine and Minister of Finance Larry Howai.
He said in February of that year, NGC warned the government that the CGCL was not a good deal.
