The vast majority of profits seen as a result of surging energy prices will be decimated by Trinidad and Tobago’s outstanding bills.
Energy Minister Stuart Young, while a guest on CNN’s Quest on Business on Tuesday, confirmed the Government did not expect huge windfalls despite high energy prices.
“I wouldn’t put it as tremendous amounts of revenue. You know, as a government, what you’re doing is you’re really making those revenue increases off of taxation. So you wait for it to come in. But as a government, just coming out of a very difficult time with the pandemic, you have bills, so we will be paying our bills. We survived the early stages of the pandemic,” said Young in response to a question from CNN’s Richard Quest concerning potential windfall from these products.
Young confirmed while many had looked to Trinidad and Tobago’s natural gas production, other areas such as ammonia and methanol had seen price surges as well, which the country hoped to see benefits from in the future.
“We’ve gone through yet another cycle coming out of the difficulties of the early stages of the pandemic. And yes, we are seeing income increase as a result. Especially on the LNG side, as well as the ammonia side of pricing. As you know with ammonia prices, they’ve climbed from around US$180 a metric ton. They’re now hovering around US$1,400 a metric ton, so there is a significant increase in revenue to these companies, etc. And we will see some in our coffers as well,” said Young during the interview.
Young added that a significant chunk of the money earned is expected to be spent on education.
“The government revenue is used to look after approximately 1.4 million people in Trinidad and Tobago, who, quite frankly, have quite a good life. So we will be spending it on our education, which we spent billions on in terms of our currency and just other things that are necessary for the people of Trinidad and Tobago,” said the Energy Minister.
The minister also talked up Trinidad and Tobago’s ability to step up given the energy crisis created by the ongoing Russia Ukraine conflict.
“We’re looking on at this international crisis taking place and as you said, we see ourselves as punching way above our belt. We have been a significant gas producer, LNG producer for the last few decades. At our height of production we were pumping out about 770 million MMBtu of LNG a year on an annual basis. We are four trains, and so we see the ability we have additional capacity right now,” said Young.
“We are eager to step in to assist in what is going on globally, in whatever way we can. It’s not only on the LNG front, we were also a significant ammonia producer in Trinidad as well. Ammonia and methanol and we have capacity there as well. So, as a gas producer who turns gas into both LNG as well as what we call Pet-chems and ammonia, methanol, urea, UAN (fertiliser), we are ready to do what we can to assist with what we see as this crisis taking place.”
The minister said the onus was on other oil and gas countries like Trinidad and Tobago to ramp up production and provide an alternative to Russia during this crisis.
