Sean Nero

New­ly ap­point­ed Japan­ese Am­bas­sador to T&T Mit­suhiko Oka­da is op­ti­mistic about a re­turn on in­vest­ment from a large-scale en­er­gy joint ven­ture be­tween T&T and Japan­ese com­pa­nies al­though en­er­gy prices are still in neg­a­tive ter­ri­to­ry.

Speak­ing at a wel­come re­cep­tion at his res­i­dence in St Clair, Oka­da said: "Our eco­nom­ic ties have been ro­bust in the en­er­gy sec­tor with the pres­ence of a Japan­ese com­pa­ny in T&T in the area of pow­er gen­er­a­tion and more re­cent­ly, a group of Japan­ese com­pa­nies which have em­barked on a large-scale project in the down­stream in­dus­try of nat­ur­al gas a La Brea. De­vel­op­ment of the down­stream in­dus­try will sure­ly con­tribute to job cre­ation, as well as eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion in T&T."

He was re­fer­ring to a project de­vel­op­ment agree­ment be­tween a Japan­ese-led con­sor­tium com­pris­ing Mit­subishi Gas Chem­i­cal Com­pa­ny Inc, Mit­subishi Cor­po­ra­tion and Massy Hold­ings Ltd for es­tab­lish­ment of petro­chem­i­cal plants for pro­duc­tion of methanol and di­methyl ether (DME) at Union In­dus­tri­al Es­tate, La Brea.

A joint ven­ture com­pa­ny, Caribbean Gas Chem­i­cal Ltd, was formed to un­der­take Phase I of the project, with cap­i­tal ex­pen­di­ture of US$850 mil­lion.

With re­spect to cul­tur­al ex­changes the am­bas­sador spoke about first In­ter­na­tion­al Panora­ma Com­pe­ti­tion host­ed in T&T in Au­gust in which Panora­ma Steel Or­ches­tra, a group of 60 Japan­ese pan play­ers

Oka­da al­so not­ed shared con­cerns about cli­mate change which For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter Den­nis Moses ad­dressed at the 70th Ses­sion of the Unit­ed Na­tions Gen­er­al As­sem­bly Meet­ing in New York last week.

"We have been ex­pe­ri­enc­ing an in­creas­ing num­ber of ex­treme weath­er events around the world. Just one and a half months ago, we wit­nessed the dev­as­tat­ing flood­ing in Do­mini­ca, with Japan quick­ly re­spond­ing to their emer­gency needs. And then, just two weeks lat­er, Japan was it­self struck by heavy rain­fall, re­sult­ing in a flood­ing dis­as­ter. Fol­low­ing that dis­as­ter, I was heart­ened by the warm mes­sages of sym­pa­thy from Cari­com mem­ber states," he said.

"This se­quence of re­cent events is an­oth­er ex­am­ple of the cli­mate change prob­lem that all of us have to cope with and join to­geth­er to con­front. Japan, with its ex­pe­ri­ences in dis­as­ter man­age­ment and mit­i­ga­tion, will con­tin­ue to show sol­i­dar­i­ty with vul­ner­a­ble is­land states in the Caribbean and ex­tend­ed sup­port to them ac­cord­ing­ly. Eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion, re­new­able en­er­gy and the mit­i­ga­tion of cli­mate change are just some of the ar­eas that we can co-op­er­ate on."