The fail­ure of the whol­ly State-owned Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny to ne­go­ti­ate new nat­ur­al gas sup­ply con­tracts with com­pa­nies op­er­at­ing on the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate will be prob­lem­at­ic for those op­er­a­tors, their cred­it rat­ings and oth­er stake­hold­ers.

That was the analy­sis of for­mer min­is­ter of en­er­gy, Stu­art Young, as he com­ment­ed on the down­grade by S&P Glob­al of Con­sol­i­dat­ed En­er­gy Ltd (CEL), the petro­chem­i­cal pro­duc­er on the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate and in Oman that is owned by the Swiss com­pa­ny, Pro­man AG.

On No­vem­ber 3, glob­al rat­ing agency S&P down­grad­ed its long-term is­suer cred­it and is­sue-lev­el rat­ings on Con­sol­i­dat­ed En­er­gy Ltd (CEL), from B to ‘CCC+,’ plac­ing the com­pa­ny deep­er in­to junk-bond sta­tus.