The Port of Ga­le­o­ta, which opened ear­li­er this month, has a strate­gic role in pro­tect­ing the coun­try's en­er­gy in­stal­la­tions against ter­ror­ist at­tacks and oth­er se­cu­ri­ty risks, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine said yes­ter­day.

In an ad­dress at the Amer­i­can Cham­ber of Com­merce of T&T's (Am­chamTT) HSSE Con­fer­ence and Ex­hi­bi­tion at the Hy­att Re­gency in Port-of-Spain, he said the US$85 mil­lion fa­cil­i­ty, the first new port in T&T in 17 years, pro­vides the Coast Guard with a ded­i­cat­ed berth and pres­ence on Trinidad's east coast."This will aid in al­low­ing the Coast Guard to pro­tect our en­er­gy in­stal­la­tions off the east coast as well as aid in re­sponse to ac­ci­dent and emer­gency search and res­cue," he said.

Ear­li­er in his ad­dress, in ac­knowl­edg­ing the im­por­tance of the Am­cham event, Ram­nar­ine told con­fer­ence par­tic­i­pants: "Giv­en what is hap­pen­ing in the world to­day with the pro­lif­er­a­tion of ter­ror­ism we must work to­geth­er to se­cure our fa­cil­i­ties and our peo­ple."The min­is­ter said HSSE was crit­i­cal in T&T's en­er­gy sec­tor where per­son­nel op­er­ate "with high pres­sures, high tem­per­a­tures, at heights, with ro­tat­ing equip­ment and in a some­time dif­fi­cult off­shore en­vi­ron­ment."

"Un­der­pin­ning the al­most 780,000 bar­rels of oil equiv­a­lent of pro­duc­tion is four LNG trains, one re­fin­ery, eleven am­mo­nia plants, sev­en methanol plants, two di­rect re­duced iron plants, six pow­er plants and thou­sands of kilo­me­tres of pipeline . . . un­der­lin­ing all that is the phi­los­o­phy of health, safe­ty, se­cu­ri­ty and the en­vi­ron­ment," he said

He pre­dict­ed that 2015 will be one of the busiest years on record for T&T's oil and gas sec­tor. He said the an­tic­i­pat­ed high lev­el of ac­tiv­i­ty will be the re­sult of the 12 pro­duc­tion shar­ing con­tracts signed by the En­er­gy Min­istry in the last four years and the re­turn of in­vestor con­fi­dence.Ram­nar­ine said three land li­cens­es and two more deep­wa­ter pro­duc­tion shar­ing con­tracts will be signed short­ly.

"In 2015 Petrotrin will com­plete the South West Sol­da­do project. This is a huge un­der­tak­ing from both the en­gi­neer­ing and the safe­ty per­spec­tive," he said."Once com­plet­ed it will bring on­line ap­prox­i­mate­ly 6,000 bar­rels of in­cre­men­tal oil pro­duc­tion per day. Al­ready, we are see­ing signs of a re­cov­ery in na­tion­al oil pro­duc­tion; I caveat that by say­ing it re­quires con­stant in­vest­ment.

"oil pro­duc­tion has been sta­bilised and has been around 81,000 bar­rels of oil per day (bopd) for the last three years. With South West Sol­da­do ful­ly on­line we could head back to above 90,000 bopd by the end of 2015."Ram­nar­ine said with the pro­duc­tion shar­ing con­tracts and oth­er com­mit­ments some 53 ex­plo­ration wells will be drilled dur­ing the re­main­der of the decade. He added that for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment in the en­er­gy sec­tor for the pe­ri­od 2011 to 2013 is three times what it was for 2008 to 2010.