Click to view full size

Nu­trien Lim­it­ed has an­nounced a con­trolled shut­down of its Trinidad Ni­tro­gen op­er­a­tions at Point Lisas, ef­fec­tive Oc­to­ber 23. The com­pa­ny says the move fol­lows port ac­cess re­stric­tions im­posed by the Na­tion­al En­er­gy Cor­po­ra­tion and an un­re­li­able nat­ur­al gas sup­ply that has weak­ened the plant’s fi­nan­cial per­for­mance. Nu­trien says it will con­tin­ue to en­gage with stake­hold­ers and ex­plore its op­tions for the fu­ture of its Trinidad op­er­a­tions.

In an in­ter­nal email to staff, Vice Pres­i­dent and Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor Ed­mond Thomp­son said Nu­trien had been dis­put­ing NEC’s claim that it owes sev­er­al mil­lion dol­lars in retroac­tive port ser­vice fees. But with NEC now mov­ing to re­strict port ac­cess, the com­pa­ny has no choice but to be­gin a con­trolled tem­po­rary shut­down. Thomp­son said a de­tailed plan will be shared soon and that some tem­po­rary lay­offs may be nec­es­sary, though a small team will stay on to main­tain es­sen­tial ser­vices. He al­so urged staff to con­tin­ue re­port­ing for du­ty and di­rect­ed me­dia queries to Nu­trien’s com­mu­ni­ca­tions team.

Re­act­ing to the de­vel­op­ment, for­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Stu­art Young de­scribed it as “the first sign of col­lapse of the en­er­gy sec­tor un­der the UNC Gov­ern­ment.” He ac­cused Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and her min­is­ters of de­stroy­ing in­vestor con­fi­dence and dri­ving the Point Lisas es­tate in­to cri­sis, warn­ing that their han­dling of the sec­tor will dam­age both in­vest­ment and na­tion­al rev­enue.