Despite rising oil prices, Energy Minister Carolyn Seepersad-Bachan believes that T&T still has to find others ways of generating economic activities. She was commenting on the price of Brent crude oil which is currently hovering around $ 90 a barrel. "A lot of the forecasts are saying that we are going to have higher energy prices especially in terms of oil so it's not surprising that we see oil move in the region of US$90 and might even hit US$100 before Christmas. "I still think there's a lot of volatility in the market though. We can't bank on this. That does not stop us from getting economic activity going in the country.
"What it helps us to do is by helping our revenue streams, it will help us bring down the deficit. I expect economic activity to pick up by the early quarter of next year," she said. Seepersad-Bachan was speaking yesterday after the launch of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) Committee at the Ministry of Energy, Tower C, IFC, Port-of-Spain. She said T&T was a natural gas-based economy so gas prices are even more important than oil prices. "Higher oil prices bring in more revenue streams and if the gas price move up as well we'll get better revenue streams. Right now there is still a lot of volatility but my concern is more the gas price and where it is.
"I just came back from the global Gas Exporting Country Forum which was held in Qatar and that was an issue discussed in terms of parity between gas and oil. "Right now, the gas price is over $4 which means we see the gas price moving but not in parity with the oil," she said. She believes others commodity prices could also see an upward movement. "In addition if gas moves together with oil which is not happening right now and is creating some concern, if those prices move up we will see other commodity prices move upwards. These include ammonia, methanol and others. That augurs well for T&T," she said.
