T&T’s en­er­gy sec­tor is fac­ing mount­ing fi­nan­cial pres­sure, as de­clin­ing gas sup­plies, ex­pir­ing con­tracts and a string of petro­chem­i­cal plant shut­downs con­verge to erode for­eign ex­change earn­ings and gov­ern­ment rev­enue—rais­ing ur­gent ques­tions not on­ly about the scale of the eco­nom­ic fall­out, but al­so about the pol­i­cy di­rec­tion need­ed to sta­bilise and sus­tain the in­dus­try.

En­er­gy ex­perts, busi­ness lead­ers and the Op­po­si­tion warn that with hun­dreds of mil­lions of US dol­lars in an­nu­al earn­ings al­ready lost, the coun­try must now con­front dif­fi­cult de­ci­sions on gas al­lo­ca­tion, in­vest­ment strat­e­gy and the long-term fu­ture of its en­er­gy mod­el.

At the cen­tre of that con­cern is the mount­ing eco­nom­ic im­pact as en­er­gy an­a­lyst Gre­go­ry McGuire es­ti­mat­ed the com­bined loss of pro­duc­tion from petro­chem­i­cal shut­downs—in­clud­ing Methanex’s At­las plant, that com­pa­ny’s Ti­tan fa­cil­i­ty and Nu­trien’s five-plant ni­tro­gen com­plex—could re­move be­tween US$500 mil­lion and US$700 mil­lion in an­nu­al for­eign ex­change earn­ings that have gone of­fline in less than 12 months.