72 Business View Caribbean - January 2015
chambers, which we will work with if we have issues
which effect the wider economy.
BUSINESS VIEW: Can you talk about any specific
players in the industry down there that have been
particularly instrumental? Who are some the main
drivers and the most integral foundations of the in-
dustry down there?
DRIVER:
The big player in the oil and gas industry in
Trinidad & Tobago is BP. They’re our biggest producer.
Then you have BG. These are both British companies.
We have an American company called EOG Resources
and then BHP Billiton, an Australian-based natural re-
sources company. Those are our major gas producers.
We also have Repsol, a Spanish oil producer, and then
there’s the state oil company, Petrotrin, and a state
gas company, National Gas Company. Those are some
of the major state companies. If you then move to the
petrochemicals and the gas processing side, there’s
Atlantic, that’s the company who processes natural
gas into LNG for export. They are owned by some of
the same shareholders as the upstream companies
that I mentioned previously. On the petrochemical
side, we have Yara, who are a Norwegian company.
We have Methanex and PCS, the Potash Corporation
of Saskatchewan – both are Canadian. We also have
some American investments. The biggest number of
plants are owned by Methanol Holdings Trinidad Lim-
ited, which is a German-owned company; it did have a
majority Trinidad shareholding but these shares have
been sold as part of the radical restructuring of CL Fi-
nancial, a Trinidadian conglomerate who got into seri-
ous difficulties after the 2008 financial crisis.
BUSINESS VIEW: You mentioned a couple of state-
owned operations – how have they been able to sur-
vive with so many other global players also involved?
Are they strong and healthy? What’s their outlook?
GOVERNMENT & PUBLIC SECTORS
