?Tabaquite MP Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj believes that by 2019, the Government will not be able to generate enough electricity in T&T. Speaking at a public meeting held at the Macaulay Community Centre on Tuesday night, Maharaj painted a bleak picture of T&T's future. He said because the Government had failed to diversify, T&T would be unable to sustain its power supplies by the end of the next decade.
"Currently our gas is used mainly to generate electricity for all the power needs of T&T. It is used as feedstock to operate the entire Point Lisas Industrial Estate and also as export to international markets through the four Atlantic LNG facilities in Point Fortin," Maharaj said. However, he added, "In ten years we will not be able to generate enough electricity. We will have to buy gas from abroad to generate electricity."
Maharaj said T&T's entire economy was based heavily on gas revenue generated from the sale of depleted resources of oil and gas. "The latest report carried out by Ryder Scott has indicated that our current proven reserves gives us an estimated ten years gas supply," Maharaj said. Citing statistics from the report, Maharaj said, "We have 15.43 trillion cubic feet of proved reserves. We can only estimate based on geologic and other physical data.
We are currently using around 4.1 billion cubic feet or 1.5 trillion cubic feet per year which gives us a ten year proven supply." Maharaj also criticised the Government for failing to subsidise the agricultural sector.
"T&T has a one-horse economy that the economists refer to as a petroleum-based plantation economy. Our attempts to step into cocoa, coffee and sugar have been a dismal failure," Maharaj said. He said after the sugar industry was closed down, farmers and former workers were left on the breadline.
