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ANSA McAL, one of T&T’s largest pri­vate-sec­tor com­pa­nies, said yes­ter­day that the group was placed “un­der com­mer­cial duress” by State-owned Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC), which im­posed a 77 per cent in­crease in the price of nat­ur­al gas to ANSA’s Carib Glass sub­sidiary in Jan­u­ary.

In a let­ter signed by the ANSA McAL Group CEO, An­tho­ny Sab­ga III and ad­dressed to NGC’s act­ing pres­i­dent Ed­mund Sub­ryan, the com­pa­ny said it was left with no choice but to sign the oner­ous re­vised gas sales con­tract pre­sent­ed by NGC. The sub­ject of the let­ter, dat­ed Feb­ru­ary 5, was ‘Re­view of gas sales con­tract for the pe­ri­od 2026-2028.’

“With­out prej­u­dice to our rights, we con­firm that we will ex­e­cute the re­vised gas sales con­tract you have pre­sent­ed. We do so un­der protest and un­der com­mer­cial duress, sole­ly to avert im­me­di­ate and ir­re­versible dam­age to crit­i­cal man­u­fac­tur­ing as­sets and sig­nif­i­cant dis­rup­tion to em­ploy­ment and op­er­a­tions,” stat­ed the let­ter, which was ad­dressed to four Cab­i­net min­is­ters, the NGC chair­man, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce and the re­cent­ly formed Pri­vate Sec­tor Or­ga­ni­za­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go.