On January 1, 2026, the National Gas Company of Trinidad and Tobago cut off gas supply to Nutrien - one of the largest ammonia producers at the Point Lisas Industrial Estate. The immediate cause was a dispute over retroactive port fees totalling $28 million and broader disagreements over gas pricing. But Nutrien had been winding down since October 2025, and the gas cutoff formalised what was already underway.
Over 500 workers face termination. The local CO2 supply chain - critical for medical facilities, food preservation, and industrial applications - has been disrupted. And the foreign exchange earnings that Nutrien's ammonia exports generated have stopped.
The Dispute
NGC alleged that downstream petrochemical companies, including Nutrien, were diverting US dollar revenues overseas rather than converting them into Trinidad and Tobago dollars through the local banking system. This allegation strikes at a sensitive nerve: the country has a documented forex shortage, with businesses reporting three-to-nine-month waits for foreign exchange and banks reducing US dollar credit card limits.
The $28 million in retroactive port fees added a concrete financial dispute on top of the broader policy disagreement. Nutrien - a Canadian multinational and one of the world's largest fertiliser producers - appears to have concluded that the operating environment at Point Lisas had become uneconomic.
NGC Chairman Gerald Ramdeen's handling of the dispute has drawn scrutiny. Former Energy Minister Stuart Young blamed UNC-appointed boards for creating an adversarial relationship with the downstream operators that generate the country's petrochemical export revenue.
What 500 Jobs Means at Point Lisas
Point Lisas is not a single factory. It is an industrial ecosystem where gas enters at one end and ammonia, methanol, urea, and other petrochemical products emerge at the other. The plants are interconnected through gas supply agreements, shared infrastructure, and overlapping supply chains.
When one major operator shuts down, the effects ripple. Nutrien's closure removes a significant buyer of NGC's gas - which means less revenue for NGC, which means less revenue for the government, which owns NGC. The workers who lose their jobs at Nutrien will spend less in the surrounding communities. The contractors who serviced the plant will lose that business.
Farm Progress, the agricultural industry publication, reported that the shutdown could pressure global ammonia and fertiliser markets. Trinidad and Tobago is a meaningful player in global ammonia exports. When a major ammonia plant goes offline, buyers look elsewhere, and those relationships do not always come back when production resumes.
The CO2 Problem
The least-discussed consequence of the Nutrien shutdown is the disruption to local carbon dioxide supply. CO2 is a byproduct of ammonia production. It is used in hospitals for certain medical procedures, in the food and beverage industry for carbonation and preservation, and in various industrial processes.
Trinidad and Tobago does not have a standalone CO2 production facility. The supply has historically come from the ammonia plants. When Nutrien shut down, a portion of the country's CO2 supply went with it. This is the kind of second-order effect that does not make headlines but affects operations across multiple sectors.
The Bigger Question
Nutrien is not the first petrochemical company to reduce operations at Point Lisas, and it may not be the last. The question for the other operators - Methanex, Proman, NGL - is whether they face similar contract risks. If NGC's approach to gas pricing and fee disputes can shut down one major operator, the others have reason to evaluate their own exposure.
The Energy Chamber's Q1 2026 survey found that 60% of energy services companies reported lower business value and 56% reported below-typical volume. The sector is contracting at a moment when the government's fiscal projections depend on it expanding.
The promised resolution discussions between NGC and Nutrien have not produced a public outcome. The workers waiting for severance and redeployment have not received a timeline. And the question of whether this dispute was a justified enforcement of contractual obligations or a governance failure that cost the country a major employer and foreign exchange earner remains unanswered.
What is clear is that 500 workers are in limbo, the CO2 supply chain is disrupted, and the decision that caused both was made by a state-owned company whose chairman has not publicly accounted for the full consequences.