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Apart from the im­pact of the cap­ture of Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nicholas Maduro by US forces on T&T’s fu­ture nat­ur­al gas sup­plies on Jan­u­ary 3, the biggest and most con­se­quen­tial busi­ness news sto­ry for the first six weeks of 2026 has been the de­ci­sion by the state-owned Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go (NGC) to in­crease the price of nat­ur­al gas to its light in­dus­tri­al and com­mer­cial cus­tomers (LICs) and Trinidad Ce­ment Ltd (TCL.

On De­cem­ber 24, 2025 (Christ­mas Eve), NGC com­mu­ni­cat­ed to the LICs and TCL that it was in­creas­ing the price of nat­ur­al gas to them by 77 per cent, that the pro­posed price of gas for 2026 was non-ne­go­tiable, and that if com­pa­nies did not agree to the terms and con­di­tions of its sup­ply of gas, it would be al­lo­cat­ed to an­oth­er com­pa­ny.

In re­sponse to a let­ter from T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Dale Par­son, call­ing for a less oner­ous nat­ur­al gas price in­crease, NGC chair­man Ger­ald Ramdeen wrote: