An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

Lo­cal busi­ness groups are hail­ing the Gov­ern­ment for bring­ing the Drag­on Gas Field li­cence to re­al­i­ty.

In re­sponse to the an­nounce­ment on Thurs­day night, Am­cham T&T told Guardian that the agree­ment be­tween Venezuela and T&T on the Drag­on Field was a huge step for­ward for the coun­try’s econ­o­my and en­er­gy sec­tor in par­tic­u­lar.

The cham­ber con­grat­u­lat­ed the Gov­ern­ment on the sig­nif­i­cant work that had been done to get the project to this point, es­pe­cial­ly in some ex­treme­ly dif­fi­cult geo-po­lit­i­cal cir­cum­stances.

“Once the project comes to fruition, T&T will be bring­ing gas to our coun­try from out­side our bor­ders for the first time, which will be his­toric and change the par­a­digm for the fu­ture,” Am­cham T&T said in a What­sApp re­sponse.

“This gas will have a sig­nif­i­cant pos­i­tive im­pact on our econ­o­my. While we ac­knowl­edge that there are ad­di­tion­al steps re­quired to get to the first gas, we re­main con­fi­dent that this is achiev­able.”

Al­so com­ment­ing on the deal, the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce said while this progress will not be an im­me­di­ate fix for the coun­try’s im­me­di­ate needs for pos­si­ble short­falls in the down­stream in­dus­tries, it is promis­ing.

“We com­mend the Gov­ern­ment, NGC and Shell for their con­tin­ued com­mit­ment to our oil and gas sec­tor as the T&T Cham­ber and our busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty con­tin­ue to work with stake­hold­ers to en­hance and de­vel­op the Small and Medi­um-Sized En­ter­pris­es (SMEs) and oth­er non-oil and gas sec­tors,” the cham­ber said.

Con­fed­er­a­tion of Re­gion­al Busi­ness Cham­bers Co­or­di­na­tor Jai Lelad­hars­ingh al­so in­di­cat­ed that this de­vel­op­ment is very good news for Trinidad and To­ba­go.

He said the CR­BC now hopes to see the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate and At­lantic LNG op­er­at­ing at full ca­pac­i­ty in the near term.

Steel Work­ers Union pres­i­dent Tim­o­thy Bai­ley was al­so pleased with the progress made on the deal.

“We must give com­men­da­tion when it’s de­served. This news is key to the re­sus­ci­ta­tion of the steel in­dus­try in Trinidad and To­ba­go and po­ten­tial­ly a turn­around in our eco­nom­ic for­tunes,” Bai­ley said.

“We com­mend the Min­is­ter of En­er­gy Stu­art Young and Prime Min­is­ter Kei­th Row­ley for get­ting this right. They have worked on this deal for some time and their per­sis­tence seems to have paid off for the coun­try.”

When the Oil­field Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU) was con­tact­ed about the deal, se­nior of­fi­cials de­clined to com­ment at this time.