Raphael John-Lall

T&T has to be­gin look­ing at oth­er sources of rev­enue be­cause the en­er­gy sec­tor will not be able to sus­tain the coun­try for­ev­er, says BPTT's Chief Ex­ec­u­tive, Robert Ri­ley. "It is clear to me that what got us to this point it is prob­a­bly not go­ing to be enough to sus­tain the en­er­gy in­dus­try for the length of time it needs to be sus­tained. "Sec­ond­ly oil and gas are wast­ing as­sets as we use them up. There is no re­al process for re­plac­ing them as fast as we could use them. No mat­ter how much we can find, we are go­ing to have less and less of it. That means we need to be think­ing of what will sus­tain us be­yond oil and gas," he said. Speak­ing at the first day of pre­sen­ta­tions at the Trinidad and To­ba­go En­er­gy Con­fer­ence 2010 at the Hy­att Re­gency Ho­tel, Port-of-Spain, Ri­ley said that it was clear that the coun­try des­per­ate­ly need­ed rev­enue and these mod­er­ate prices gas have be­come a sig­nif­i­cant source of rev­enue.

"The chal­lenge for in­no­va­tion is to bring ef­fi­cien­cy to the way we pro­duce it. There is still a lot of op­por­tu­ni­ty to ex­ploit oil and gas in com­mer­cial and tech­ni­cal terms," he said. He added that there is still rea­son to be op­ti­mistic about en­er­gy prices. "Oil con­sump­tion is turn­ing the cor­ner rais­ing some op­ti­mism around for price move­ments as de­mand in­creas­es. On the oth­er hand gas prices for some time will re­main fair­ly soft. There is a huge sur­plus of gas in the mar­ket," he said. For this rea­son, he said the en­er­gy sec­tor needs to be looked at as an ex­am­ple of in­no­va­tion and en­tre­pre­neur­ship that should be tak­en in­to the wider econ­o­my.

"Some of the skills and ca­pa­bil­i­ties that have been de­vel­oped in the en­er­gy sec­tor and mind­sets that have been cre­at­ed can be tak­en as well," he said. He al­so said T&T has to find new ways of be­ing com­pet­i­tive. "The emer­gence of quite a large amount of Liq­ue­fied Nat­ur­al Gas (LNG) has re­moved the unique ad­van­tage that the we en­joyed for so long of be­ing the first in the mar­ket. We now have to seek oth­er ways of be­ing com­pet­i­tive in a world of much heav­ier gas on gas com­pe­ti­tion. "But I think that nat­ur­al gas will con­tin­ue to re­main a very im­por­tant fu­el and the de­mand for it will grow," he said.