Trinidad and To­ba­go wants to see a fair price for nat­ur­al gas and is more con­cerned about that than the es­tab­lish­ment of any world gas pro­duc­ers' car­tel. That is the view of En­er­gy Min­is­ter Car­olyn Seep­er­sad -Bachan who is now the al­ter­nate pres­i­dent and chair­man of the ex­ec­u­tive board of the Gas Ex­port­ing Coun­tries Fo­rum. Mrs Seep­er­sad-Bachan said she was con­cerned that glob­al nat­ur­al gas prices re­mained weak and that was not in the in­ter­est of Trinidad and To­ba­go. "If you look at our pro­duc­tion port­fo­lio, you will see that we are far more re­liant on gas than on oil. In fact, nat­ur­al gas is the main­stay of our econ­o­my and at present the nat­ur­al gas prices are weak par­tic­u­lar­ly in our ma­jor mar­ket, the US marke , and we need to see high­er prices for LNG in that mar­kets." Min­is­ter Seep­er­sad Bachan told BG.

The Min­is­ter would not go as far as the Venezue­lan Min­is­ter of Pe­tro­le­um Rafael Ramirez who has called for oil and nat­ur­al gas par­i­ty. Mr Ramirez is re­port­ed in the Gulf Times news­pa­per as call­ing for gas prices to be "reg­u­lat­ed and show greater par­i­ty to the oil price." The Unit­ed States and Eu­ro­pean coun­tries have pub­licly ex­pressed con­cerns that the Gas Ex­port­ing Coun­tries Fo­rum could be­come an­oth­er OPEC–which is per­ceived by some west­ern coun­tries which are im­porters of en­er­gy prod­ucts as be­ing a car­tel–there­by sig­nif­i­cant­ly af­fect­ing nat­ur­al gas prices. Seep­er­sad Bachan said there is no doubt that nat­ur­al gas prices are too low but that all this coun­try want­ed was a fair price. She point­ed out that low gas prices neg­a­tive­ly im­pact­ed the de­sire by en­er­gy com­pa­nies to in­vest in new ex­plo­ration ac­tiv­i­ties, which al­so af­fects the lo­cal ser­vices sec­tor.

Venezuela has al­so called for a lim­it­ing of gas ex­ports to af­fect de­mand, but that pro­pos­al has not re­ceived much sup­port from oth­er gas ex­porters. On­ly this week Deutsche Bank AG raised its 2011 oil price fore­cast to US$87.50 per bar­rel from US$80 per bar­rel but low­ered its fore­cast for nat­ur­al gas. The bank said it be­lieved the trad­ing range for Brent crude has moved from US$65-85 per bar­rel to $70-90 per bar­rel and as a re­sult they were mov­ing their 2011 fore­cast at the top end of that range. How­ev­er the bank has low­er­ing its 2011 gas price fore­cast for the first half of 2011 to US$4.25 per mil­lion BTUs from US$4.70 per mil­lion BTUs pre­vi­ous­ly but ex­pect bet­ter con­di­tions by fourth-quar­ter 2011.?Ac­cord­ing to the Ger­man bank, the on­ly way to fix low gas prices is to have a pe­ri­od of even low­er gas prices. ?This means the Bank's fore­cast ?oil price fore­cast for 2011 is now five per cent above con­sen­sus and the gas price fore­cast is about 10 per cent be­low con­sen­sus.

Trinidad and To­ba­go is the largest ex­porter of LNG to the US mar­ket but the prices at the Hen­ry Hub have been very weak due to the pro­duc­tion of sig­nif­i­cant amounts of shale gas in­to the US mar­ket. The weak prices in the US have al­so damp­ened prices in oth­er lu­cra­tive mar­kets like Japan and with the world econ­o­my re­main­ing frag­ile nat­ur­al gas prices re­main weak. With Min­is­ter Seep­er­sad Bachan as­sum­ing al­ter­na­tive pres­i­den­cy of the fo­rum from Venezuela's Pe­tro­le­um Min­is­ter, for the next 12 months the or­ga­ni­za­tion's ex­ec­u­tive would be lo­cat­ed in Trinidad and To­ba­go at the Min­istry of En­er­gy.