The dis­clo­sure on Fri­day by the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) of a strate­gic re­align­ment of cred­it rat­ing agency en­gage­ments has left many an­a­lysts with ques­tions con­cern­ing the fu­ture of the whol­ly state-owned com­pa­ny’s in­ter­na­tion­al busi­ness re­la­tion­ships.

NGC said part of this re­align­ment was the dis­con­tin­u­a­tion of its re­la­tion­ship with Moody’s In­vestors Ser­vice, ef­fec­tive Feb­ru­ary 26.

The an­nounce­ment of this re­align­ment came hours af­ter Moody’s stat­ed it had with­drawn the Ba2 cor­po­rate fam­i­ly rat­ing (CFR), ba2 base­line cred­it as­sess­ment (BCA) and Ba2 se­nior un­se­cured notes of NGC due to the is­suer’s de­ci­sion to cease par­tic­i­pa­tion in the rat­ing process.