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Con­sul­tant Busi­ness Ed­i­tor

Glob­al rat­ing agency S&P has down­grad­ed its long-term is­suer cred­it and is­sue-lev­el rat­ings on Con­sol­i­dat­ed En­er­gy Ltd (CEL), a sub­sidiary of the largest op­er­a­tor on the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate, from B to ‘CCC+’, plac­ing the com­pa­ny deep­er in­to junk-bond sta­tus.

S&P de­scribes CEL as one of the largest pro­duc­ers of methanol and ni­tro­gen world­wide, with a pres­ence in the Amer­i­c­as, Eu­rope, and Asia. The com­pa­ny owns five methanol plants, one ni­tro­gen fa­cil­i­ty, and a mi­nor­i­ty in­ter­est in two am­mo­nia plants in T&T, as well as two methanol plants in the US- in­clud­ing a 50 per cent con­trol­ling in­ter­est in a Texas methanol joint ven­ture, called Nat­ga­so­line, along with nat­ur­al gas re­serves and pro­duc­tion on the Gulf Coast.