UK Board Comment
From yesterday's comments on the UK board, unable to vouch for the contents, but might be all part of the negotiating process?
"Khan's reference to the $3.10, $3.25 and $3.50 was as a result of Opposition Senator Wade Mark's assertion that the NGC could have only afforded to pay to the Upstream producers like BPTT, Royal Dutch Shell and EOG Resources, US $3.10 per million British thermal unit (MMBTU) of natural gas but the energy companies wanted US $3.25. Mysteriously, according to Mark, a team led by Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley forced the NGC to agree to US $3.50 per MMBTU which it cannot now sell onto the downstream.The Energy Minister posited: "We are in a position now where the chain has gotten weak. The NGC has two choices, impose the additional charges on the downstreamers and collapse the whole of Point Lisas, or find a mechanism to work it through... We have smaller fields so the unit cost per mmbtu is higher. For the chain to survive you need upstream. Upstream is saying I cannot survive on a price less than this and the downstream is saying I cannot survive on a price more than this and the NGC is in the middle being squeezed out as the aggregator. That is the complex situation we are currently involved in."It is a difficult situation but had the government seen more than a year ago that there is a need to pivot, to not group think and adopt a position that if something is not complementary to the government then we must try to destroy the messenger, we might have been in a better position today.The Trinidad model has run its course. We must now look at ways in which we can use the foundation of petrochemicals and go further downstream. We must get the fiscal situation right and we must determine once and for all the future role of the NGC, on the basis of economics and finance and not on sentimentality.We must pivot now or face ruin."