Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Lar­ry Howai says in­ter­na­tion­al merg­ers will in­su­late the T&T econ­o­my from the back­lash of falling en­er­gy prices.

He said it can no longer be busi­ness as usu­al for Gov­ern­ment be­cause of the de­cline in for­eign rev­enue, so it is im­por­tant to form sus­tain­able merg­ers.

"Pre­lim­i­nary in­di­ca­tions in­di­cate that the first half of this year we shall run a deficit but it will be low­er than orig­i­nal­ly fore­cast­ed and con­sid­er­ably bet­ter than our re­vised fore­cast, based on re­duc­tion of rev­enues con­se­quent with the fall in en­er­gy prices," he said.

The min­is­ter said with the ex­pect­ed lift­ing of sanc­tions against Iran and the con­tin­ued build up of oil in­ven­to­ries in the Unit­ed States, rev­enue and ex­pen­di­ture ini­tia­tives have to be fast tracked in the com­ing months to in­su­late the T&T econ­o­my against the ef­fects of those changes. He said the chem­i­cal com­plex to be built at La Brea will make a pos­i­tive con­tri­bu­tion to that ef­fort, pro­vid­ing a boost to the econ­o­my.

"For­eign di­rect in­ves­ti­ga­tion from this project alone is US$850 mil­lion or TT$5.4 bil­lion," he said

Dur­ing con­struc­tion phase of the project, Howai said, 3,000 peo­ple will be em­ployed and when the plant is ful­ly op­er­a­tional, 184 peo­ple will get per­ma­nent well pay­ing jobs.

"T&T is no stranger to large petro­chem­i­cal con­cerns. Our pe­tro­le­um in­dus­try and down­stream ac­tiv­i­ties are high­ly de­vel­oped and recog­nised the world over. This DME plant will be the first of its kind here," he said.

"Its high oxy­gen con­tent, lack of sul­phur or oth­er nox­ious com­pounds and ul­tra clean com­bus­tion make DME a ver­sa­tile and promis­ing so­lu­tion in the mix­ture of clean re­new­able and low car­bon fu­el," Howai added.

His Cab­i­net col­league, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine, com­ment­ing on the US$70 mil­lion ac­qui­si­tion of BG Group's as­sets by Roy­al Dutch Shell, said that merg­er will of­fer op­por­tu­ni­ties for up­stream in­dus­tries.

"Shell has been look­ing for an up­stream po­si­tion in the ex­plo­ration and pro­duc­tion busi­ness. I think Shell brings ad­van­tages to T&T and one of these ad­van­tages is ac­cess to cap­i­tal," he said.

Ram­nar­ine said he and a min­is­te­r­i­al team will meet with Shell of­fi­cials this week to dis­cuss the com­pa­ny's plans for T&T.

"Shell now has a dom­i­nant po­si­tion in the LNG busi­ness in T&T," he said.

Ram­nar­ine said it might take about nine months for the deal to be fi­nal­ized as reg­u­la­to­ry is­sues have to be ad­dressed.

Roy­al Dutch Shell and BG Group have key stakes in T&T's en­er­gy sec­tor, with both com­pa­nies hold­ing sig­nif­i­cant shares in LNG ex­port/pro­duc­ing com­pa­ny At­lantic in Point Fortin.