Cit­i­zens may have to pay the in­ter­na­tion­al price for fu­el as Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley warned that this coun­try has spent tens of bil­lions in keep­ing prices low.

Row­ley said T&T is in a volatile en­er­gy sce­nario with the po­ten­tial for fu­el prices to move in ei­ther di­rec­tion.

In the cur­rent cir­cum­stances, he said this coun­try may have lit­tle choice but to im­ple­ment a fu­el lib­er­al­i­sa­tion pro­gramme to al­low do­mes­tic fu­el prices to move freely with mar­ket prices.

Speak­ing at the T&T En­er­gy Con­fer­ence host­ed by the T&T En­er­gy Cham­ber, Row­ley as­sured, how­ev­er, that in any such arrange­ment, mea­sures will be im­ple­ment­ed to cush­ion the im­pact on the trav­el­ling pub­lic.

“It is, there­fore, im­por­tant that our trans­porta­tion pol­i­cy moves away from the cur­rent mod­el based sole­ly on liq­uid fos­sil fu­els,” Row­ley said, not­ing once more that the fu­ture of mo­bil­i­ty will be elec­tric, with elec­tric ve­hi­cles be­com­ing the pre­ferred cli­mate-friend­ly trans­porta­tion op­tion.

And giv­en the un­cer­tain­ty of en­er­gy tran­si­tion, the Prime Min­is­ter al­so not­ed that it is dif­fi­cult to de­fine the end game, that is, which tech­nol­o­gy will emerge and what will be the fi­nal en­er­gy mix.

“There­fore, it is in our in­ter­est to ex­pe­di­tious­ly take steps to mon­e­tise the coun­try’s abun­dant oil and gas re­sources,” he added.

Ac­cord­ing to Row­ley, the lat­est gas re­serve au­dit es­tab­lished that at year end 2020 tech­ni­cal­ly re­cov­er­able re­sources amount­ed to 23.2 tril­lion cu­bic feet (tcf) and prospec­tive re­sources at 55.2 tcf.

Where­as the lat­est oil au­dit, es­tab­lished 3P re­serves at 455.3 mil­lion bar­rels and prospec­tive re­sources amount­ed to 3.2 bil­lion bar­rels with 90 per cent be­ing in T&T’s deep-wa­ter province, he added.

Ac­cord­ing­ly, the PM said this coun­try has em­barked on a se­ries of bid rounds which com­menced with the deep-wa­ter bid-round in De­cem­ber of last year.

The clos­ing cer­e­mo­ny for this bid round will be held on Thurs­day.

On of­fer is a large se­lec­tion of deep wa­ter acreage com­pris­ing 17 blocks.

Not­ing that T&T is not sin­gu­lar in the mat­ter as sev­er­al coun­tries are ac­tive­ly pro­mot­ing bid-rounds at this time, the PM said there is al­so com­pe­ti­tion for ex­plo­ration cap­i­tal.

“Sev­en li­cens­ing rounds were closed by the first quar­ter 2022 and an­oth­er eight li­cens­ing rounds, that are open, are ex­pect­ed to close by the end of 2022. Re­gion­al­ly, Suri­name, Colom­bia and Brazil closed suc­cess­ful bid-rounds. Up­com­ing 2022 bid-rounds com­prise Guyana’s deep-wa­ter blocks, Brazil sub-salt blocks and Ecuador oil blocks,” Row­ley not­ed.

He al­so added that in Sep­tem­ber 2021 the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries in­vit­ed nom­i­na­tions for On­shore Acreage for Com­pet­i­tive Bid­ding and 11 blocks were nom­i­nat­ed.

Based on the re­spons­es, Row­ley said the min­istry plans to launch the on­shore com­pet­i­tive bid round with­in this quar­ter.

“The off­shore shal­low wa­ter bid-round will be next. In to­tal there are 25 open shal­low wa­ter blocks for con­sid­er­a­tion. A date for the launch has not yet been de­ter­mined,” Row­ley added.

Fur­ther, he said the pro­lif­er­a­tion of bid-rounds will in­crease the com­pe­ti­tion for cap­i­tal in an en­er­gy mar­ket that is un­der­go­ing tran­si­tion.

“While we are ac­knowl­edged as a proven hy­dro­car­bon province with sub­stan­tial un­re­alised po­ten­tial, we need to main­tain our com­pet­i­tive­ness and re­silience,” Row­ley said.

This, he added, in­volves the low­er­ing pro­duc­tion costs, im­prov­ing oil and gas pro­duc­tion ef­fi­cien­cy, an at­trac­tive fis­cal regime and a more ex­pe­di­tious ex­e­cu­tion of the reg­u­la­to­ry over­sight.

Mov­ing to­wards new re­sources

As T&T moves to iden­ti­fy new re­sources, avail­able re­sources have to be man­aged.

And man­age­ment of the coun­try’s hy­dro­car­bon re­sources has not been with­out chal­lenges, Row­ley said, not­ing that a com­bi­na­tion of COVID-19, low com­mod­i­ty prices and tech­ni­cal is­sues have set­back lev­els of both oil and gas pro­duc­tion.

How­ev­er, with the ease in the pan­dem­ic and new ac­tiv­i­ty, both oil and gas pro­duc­tion are set to rise.

Ac­cord­ing to Row­ley, with new pro­duc­tion com­ing on­stream in 2022 and 2023, gas pro­duc­tion is pro­ject­ed to in­crease from present lev­els to 3.2 tril­lion cu­bic feet by 2024.

Gas sup­ply be­tween 2024 and 2027, he added, will be tight be­fore im­prov­ing in 2028 with the com­ing on­stream of mega projects, the Man­a­tee and Ca­lyp­so.

How­ev­er, the PM said the key to a sus­tained gas in­dus­try will be the ex­plo­ration and de­vel­op­ment of the coun­try’s hy­dro­car­bon re­sources as well as ac­cess to cross-bor­der nat­ur­al gas re­sources.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, Row­ley said giv­en the lead­ing role that hy­dro­gen is poised to play in the en­er­gy tran­si­tion, there is op­por­tu­ni­ty by in­dus­try play­ers to em­brace hy­dro­gen in the cre­ation of a sus­tain­able petro­chem­i­cal in­dus­try.

To this end, state-owned Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny and its whol­ly-owned sub­sidiary Na­tion­al En­er­gy in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Ke­nes­jay Green Ltd (Ke­nes­jay) are ac­tive­ly col­lab­o­rat­ing on the cre­ation of a sus­tain­able hy­dro­gen econ­o­my for the en­er­gy sec­tor of T&T, Row­ley not­ed.

He added that NGC has al­so been in­stru­men­tal in the for­ma­tion of a new green agen­da sub-com­mit­tee of the Point Lisas En­er­gy As­so­ci­a­tion (PLEA) which will lead PLEA sus­tain­abil­i­ty and green agen­da ac­tions, and co­or­di­nate syn­er­gies among mem­ber com­pa­nies.

“It is this spir­it of co-op­er­a­tion to­geth­er with in­no­va­tion that will en­able the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate to main­tain its rel­e­vance and sta­tus as a world class in­dus­tri­al cen­tre.

“An em­bod­i­ment of these char­ac­ter­is­tics is the ini­tia­tive be­ing pur­sued by Ke­nes­jay Green Ltd and Hy­dro­gen de France to es­tab­lish the coun­try’s first in­dus­tri­al project to pro­duce car­bon-free hy­dro­gen. Ke­nes­jay and Hy­dro­gen de France are to be ap­plaud­ed for their in­ge­nu­ity and it is hoped that oth­er com­pa­nies will fol­low suit,” Row­ley said.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, he said a com­pre­hen­sive, in­clu­sive and cost-ef­fec­tive strat­e­gy to ad­dress cli­mate change re­quires bring­ing in com­ple­men­tary pol­i­cy ar­eas and ex­ploit­ing syn­er­gies among them.

A case in point, he cit­ed, is elec­tric ve­hi­cles.

How­ev­er, there’s no quick fix.

Not­ing that the en­er­gy land­scape is rapid­ly evolv­ing and there­fore strate­gies should be geared to re­spond in a time­ly fash­ion to changes in the mar­ket, Row­ley said how the in­dus­try fares in the tran­si­tion de­pends to a large ex­tent to the coun­try’s col­lec­tive ef­forts.

This year marked the first-in per­son en­er­gy con­fer­ence since 2020 un­der the theme, “Lever­ag­ing the in­dus­try’s strengths for the en­er­gy tran­si­tion.”

CLICK FOR MORE BUSI­NESS NEWS