T&T’s state-owned company bids for gas processing plant in Guyana

Last Updated on Monday, 23 June 2025, 18:17 by Writer

Trinidad and Tobago’s (T&T) majority state-owned Phoenix Park Gas Processors Limited (PPGPL) is interested in establishing a natural gas processing plant in Guyana, as part of a wider plan to establish a foothold in the sister Caribbean Community (CARICOM) country, the twin-island republic’s Minister of Energy Roodal Moonilal said on Monday.

“Today, we have another activity taking place, where I believe is Phoenix Gas, is involved in a bid to assist with developing a gas processing plant in Guyana, as well. We are hoping that that bid goes well. We are hoping that something can happen there,” he said during the Parliament’s consideration of supplementary budgetary estimates.

Mr Moonilal also said he was asked to say publicly that the Trinidad and Tobago government “has been in touch” with the Oil and Gas Energy Chamber in Guyana which has pledged its support to companies from the twin-island nation to “work”.

While T&T has been in oil and gas for more than 100 years and has the infrastructure and human resources, he said his country “had no footprint” in those CARICOM territories. Suriname, Barbados, and Guyana also produce oil. Instead, he said it was left to the ingenuity and creativity of Trinidad and Tobago service companies to launch out into the Guyana market and offer a variety of services.

He also flayed the recently defeated People’s National Movement (PNM) administration for failing to have the state-owned T&T enterprises to lay the groundwork to systematically offer services in emerging oil producers – Guyana and Suriname – as a means of earning much-needed foreign exchange and creating jobs at a time of falling oil and gas production.

“Yet in having the decline, there was no concerted attempt to get a footprint into energy producing countries, particularly oil and gas, apart from downstream products and so on, where we could provide help, we can raise revenue, we can collect taxes, we can generate foreign exchange. Monies paid to a Trinidad and Tobago company in U.S. dollars can make its way to Trinidad and Tobago and pay taxes and they will have to pay certain duties and so on and generate employment in the sector,” he said.

The T&T energy minister emphasised the importance of State-owned enterprises in his country establishing themselves in Guyana, Suriname and eventually Grenada as part of a wider plan to become a regional “hub” for the oil and gas sector.

He said T&T could have had a “foothold in Guyana a few years ago” but the then-PNM-led administration had ditched an attempt by the state-owned National Energy Corporation to provide operational, technical and production assistance to the Guyana government through the international private sector. Mr Moonilal said the reason that had been cited was the heavy risk of getting involved in a US$200 million project to bring gas to shore. “They said ‘no’ because it was too risky and National Energy should not participate in Guyana in that way,” he said.