Na­tion­al En­er­gy has re­ject­ed blame for Nu­trien’s shut­down of its Trinidad op­er­a­tions, say­ing the de­ci­sion “is not one for which any re­spon­si­bil­i­ty can be as­cribed to Na­tion­al En­er­gy or NGC.”

In a de­tailed state­ment, the com­pa­ny said that when cur­rent of­fi­cials as­sumed of­fice, they found sev­er­al ex­pired or ne­glect­ed Pier User Agree­ments that al­lowed com­pa­nies, in­clud­ing Nu­trien, to pay “pep­per­corn lega­cy rates” for years, cost­ing tax­pay­ers over $500 mil­lion. It said Nu­trien’s 2006 agree­ment ex­pired in De­cem­ber 2020, yet the com­pa­ny “de­mand­ed a rate low­er than that which they en­joyed for the pre­vi­ous 15 years.”

Na­tion­al En­er­gy said it pro­posed new port and pier fees rang­ing “from US$0.02 to US$2.00 per met­ric ton of prod­uct,” at a time when am­mo­nia prices were ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$545 per met­ric ton. It ex­plained that the Na­tion­al En­er­gy Board made its pro­pos­al “in good faith to pro­vide the par­ties with a suit­able foun­da­tion to en­gage in and agree up­on new terms and con­di­tions, there­by al­low­ing Nu­trien to con­tin­ue op­er­a­tions, ser­vice its cus­tomers and re­tain its em­ploy­ees.”