Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries Stu­art Young says it is “fool­hardy” to think that the on­ly rea­son this coun­try had great re­sults com­ing out of the en­er­gy sec­tor this year was be­cause of the on­go­ing con­flict be­tween Rus­sia and Ukraine.

Young made the state­ment yes­ter­day as he post­ed a five-minute video to his Face­book page out­lin­ing the high­lights for the En­er­gy Sec­tor this year.

Young said 2022 was a sig­nif­i­cant year glob­al­ly for the en­er­gy sec­tor.

“On Feb­ru­ary 22, I was seat­ed next to the En­er­gy Min­is­ter from Rus­sia. The world changed on Feb­ru­ary 24 on the glob­al en­er­gy land­scape with the Russ­ian/ Ukraine cri­sis that has di­rect­ly af­fect­ed the com­mod­i­ty prices that we re­ly on here in T&T,” he said.

Young said oil and gas com­pa­nies were di­rect­ly re­spon­si­ble for 57 per cent of the rev­enue achieved by this coun­try in 2022.

“I can tell you we’ve con­tributed di­rect­ly out of our oil and gas com­pa­nies and our petro­chem­i­cal sec­tor ap­prox­i­mate­ly $30 bil­lion in rev­enue, that does not in­clude all of the di­rect­ly as­so­ci­at­ed ser­vice com­pa­nies re­lat­ed to the en­er­gy sec­tor, out of a rev­enue of ap­prox­i­mate­ly $53 bil­lion,” Young said.

“This year has been a very sig­nif­i­cant year, one of the things that we have achieved is more glob­al recog­ni­tion and be­ing at the ta­bles where the glob­al de­ci­sion-mak­ing is tak­ing place with re­spect to the en­er­gy sec­tor,” he said as he cit­ed trips made by him­self and Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley to Wash­ing­ton DC.

“I can al­so re­port to you right here do­mes­ti­cal­ly and lo­cal­ly we have con­tributed sig­nif­i­cant­ly not on­ly to our econ­o­my but al­so to the wel­fare of our peo­ple in T&T,” he said.

Young al­so laud­ed the re­cent agree­ment for the re­struc­tur­ing of At­lantic LNG.

“We’ve al­so com­plet­ed sig­nif­i­cant ne­go­ti­a­tions for fu­ture gas for T&T and we have been work­ing with the down­stream petro­chem­i­cal sec­tor in T&T on the am­mo­nia and the methanol side where prices have been high­er than they have been in many, many years,” he said.

Young said this coun­try need­ed to take the is­sue of cli­mate change se­ri­ous­ly es­pe­cial­ly when con­sid­er­ing the fu­ture of the en­er­gy sec­tor.

“So what we have been do­ing we have signed the methane pledge we have been look­ing and do­ing all of our home­work with methane which is one of the most harm­ful gas­es. We are push­ing hard here in the Min­istry of En­er­gy re­new­ables,” he said.

Young said this in­clud­ed the re­cent 112.2-megawatt so­lar project as well as the ex­plo­ration of a hy­dro­gen-based econ­o­my.

“We are al­so work­ing on oth­er ar­eas in the re­new­ables sec­tor and I hope to be able to come to you the pop­u­la­tion with re­spect to that in the not too dis­tant fu­ture,” he said.

“We are al­so look­ing at how can we clean up and de­car­bonise our en­er­gy sec­tor so we are look­ing at car­bon cap­ture, se­ques­tra­tion and util­i­sa­tion and I hope that we will be able to come to you the cit­i­zens with the plan as to how we can get that done be­cause we in T&T, as I have been say­ing, are blessed we have been blessed by the almighty God and we have an in­dus­try here that is per­fect­ly poised if we make the right de­ci­sions now and im­ple­ment them that will con­tin­ue to keep T&T as a glob­al leader in the en­er­gy sec­tor,” he said.

Young hailed State com­pa­nies Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um and the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny for their fi­nan­cial per­for­mances this year.

“We have done well in our en­er­gy sec­tor for 2022 but we won’t sit and wait be­cause we know that we must con­tin­ue to plan and im­ple­ment for the fu­ture gen­er­a­tions,” he said.