Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and bp’s in­ter­im chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Mur­ray Auch­in­closs have dis­cussed prospec­tive ini­tia­tives in­clud­ing the pur­suit of deep-wa­ter ex­plo­ration and sanc­tion­ing of fu­ture projects.

Dr Row­ley met with Auch­in­closs at bp’s Lon­don head­quar­ters yes­ter­day, ac­cord­ing to a state­ment is­sued by the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter.

He was ac­com­pa­nied by the Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries and Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young as well as the pres­i­dent of bp Trinidad and To­ba­go David Camp­bell.

At the talks, bp’s ex­ec­u­tive sought to af­firm that Trinidad and To­ba­go re­mains an im­por­tant part of its glob­al op­er­a­tions. The ne­go­ti­at­ing teams work­ing to re­struc­ture At­lantic LNG were al­so praised at the dis­cus­sion.

How­ev­er, for­mer Min­is­ter of En­er­gy Kevin Ram­nar­ine said there is a lack of trans­paren­cy be­tween the par­ties in­volved on any po­ten­tial share­hold­er agree­ment to be signed.

He al­so lament­ed that nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion re­mains woe­ful­ly low in T&T.

“I am see­ing a pos­si­ble sce­nario where bp’s pro­duc­tion of nat­ur­al gas in the next 12 to 15 months could dip be­low one bil­lion cu­bic feet of nat­ur­al gas. It’s noth­ing to be proud about. It’s some­thing to be very wor­ried about. So, while the Prime Min­is­ter goes and he signs the re­struc­tur­ing of At­lantic LNG, the bot­tom line is we don’t have suf­fi­cient gas to fill those trains,” he said.

“I’m hear­ing that a like­ly date for gas from deep­wa­ter is now 2030, to­wards the end of the decade. That’s a pret­ty long way away and we need gas like right now,” he con­tin­ued.

Ram­nar­ine was re­fer­ring to Train’s 2, 3 and 4 since the re­struc­tur­ing does not ap­ply to Train 1. He al­so claimed the trains are op­er­at­ing at around 60 per cent ca­pac­i­ty, which is in­suf­fi­cient.

How­ev­er, the for­mer min­is­ter said the Drag­on Gas Deal may not be the so­lu­tion to the nat­ur­al gas short­age fac­ing the coun­try.

“We can­not bet the kitchen sink, as we are do­ing, on the Drag­on deal. We have to look for oth­er av­enues to pro­duce nat­ur­al gas in Trinidad and To­ba­go. Our deep wa­ter be­ing the biggest po­ten­tial for that. And we have to ac­cel­er­ate the di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of the Trinidad and To­ba­go econ­o­my. I am not see­ing any sort of emer­gency around ei­ther,” he added.

Mean­while, en­er­gy ex­pert An­tho­ny Paul said he was hap­py to see the Gov­ern­ment meet­ing with en­er­gy stake­hold­ers. How­ev­er, he said he was hope­ful the meet­ing was pre­ced­ed by an agree­ment on clear ac­tions and de­liv­er­ables.

At a me­dia con­fer­ence on No­vem­ber 20, Dr Row­ley told re­porters that Train 1 al­lowed the Gov­ern­ment to have a seat at the ta­ble to ne­go­ti­ate the out­come of Trains 2 and 3. He said the new arrange­ment which brings Trains 2, 3 and 4 to­geth­er al­lows the State to ben­e­fit from a per­cent­age of own­er­ship across all three. While he not­ed that own­er­ship in Train 4 was around 11 per cent, he did not say the per­cent­age for the oth­ers.