The news of Exxon­Mo­bil and the T&T Gov­ern­ment sign­ing a pro­duc­tion shar­ing con­tract to de­vel­op the ul­tra deep­wa­ter block (UD-1) has gar­nered glob­al at­ten­tion. With­in a month, the lat­est deep wa­ter bid round, where 26 deep­wa­ter blocks have been of­fered, will al­so close. There is a gen­uine buzz with­in the lo­cal en­er­gy sec­tor as many view the deep­wa­ter fron­tier as the next chap­ter in the coun­try’s en­er­gy sec­tor sto­ry. De­vel­op­ment of these ex­plo­ration blocks, over the medi­um and long term, is al­so a strate­gic im­per­a­tive. Cur­rent­ly, the coun­try needs to ar­rest the de­cline in oil and gas pro­duc­tion. New gas pro­duc­tion from blocks of­fered will help stem this de­cline and sup­ply more nat­ur­al gas to petro­chem­i­cal plants op­er­at­ing in the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate. De­vel­op­ing this acreage can al­so lead to new busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ties. There are be­tween 400 and 500 lo­cal en­er­gy ser­vices com­pa­nies that can of­fer their ser­vices in de­vel­op­ing oil and gas blocks and con­tribute to em­ploy­ment and tax­es. But while ex­ploit­ing these blocks is a con­duit to rev­enue and op­por­tu­ni­ties, deep­wa­ter de­vel­op­ments are in­her­ent­ly riski­er and there are sev­er­al rungs to climb be­fore com­pa­nies be­gin to pro­duce oil or gas.

On the ca­reers por­tal page of web­site of the Min­istry of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence, it is dis­closed that ap­prox­i­mate­ly 35,000 peo­ple are em­ployed in T&T’s civ­il ser­vice in per­ma­nent and tem­po­rary roles across min­istries and de­part­ments. That web­site al­so dis­clos­es that ap­prox­i­mate­ly 21,000 peo­ple work with­in the 14 re­gion­al and mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions. That is 56,000 peo­ple em­ployed in the civ­il ser­vice and in lo­cal gov­ern­ment.

AS Bry­den & Sons Hold­ings Ltd will be list­ed on the T&T Stock Ex­change (TTSE) on Fri­day, Au­gust 29, 2025.

Re­pub­lic Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings Ltd (RFHL) has ex­pand­ed its share­hold­ing in Cay­man Na­tion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (CNC).

For­mer Cen­tral Bank gov­er­nor Dr Alvin Hi­laire has in­di­cat­ed his in­ten­tion to ini­ti­ate le­gal pro­ceed­ings against the State for the un­law­ful re­vo­ca­tion of his ap­point­ment in June this year.

Re­pub­lic Bank re­duced the US-dol­lar spend­ing lim­it on some of its cred­it cards by 50 per cent last week as a re­sult of in­creased de­mand for for­eign ex­change and the prospect of re­duced short-term in­flows of for­eign ex­change, a Cen­tral Bank of­fi­cial said yes­ter­day.

T&T’s in­fla­tion rate for Ju­ly 2025, which mea­sures the per­cent­age change in the all-items in­dex for the month of Ju­ly 2025 over Ju­ly 2024, was 1.5 per cent, ac­cord­ing to the lat­est da­ta re­leased by the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice (CSO).

Over the years, there has been an in­crease in the num­ber of com­plaints from peo­ple who have fall­en vic­tim to in­vest­ment scams op­er­at­ing in T&T. The more com­mon scams are the ponzi scheme and the pyra­mid scheme. How­ev­er there are nu­mer­ous types of scams with the main aim be­ing to dupe in­vestors.

Last week, the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Gov­ern­ment cel­e­brat­ed its first 100 days in of­fice.

Sev­er­al cus­tomers of ship­ping com­pa­ny Trin­ba­go Ex­press are rais­ing con­cerns over the abrupt clo­sure of its Trinidad branch­es and a lack of com­mu­ni­ca­tion re­gard­ing un­de­liv­ered car­go.  

While many brides look for­ward to a lav­ish cer­e­mo­ny, sur­round­ed by their friends and fam­i­ly, her mar­riage to Keishaun Nor­griff was com­plet­ed at the Red House in Port-of-Spain as the cou­ple thought it bet­ter to have a sim­ple wed­ding so that they could in­vest fur­ther in their bud­ding busi­ness­es.

There has been yet an­oth­er re­duc­tion in the for­eign ex­change lim­it for cred­it card hold­ers at Re­pub­lic Bank.