Geisha Kow­lessar-Alon­zo

In his fi­nal speech as chair­man of the En­er­gy Cham­ber of T&T, Dwight Ma­habir is ad­vis­ing that if this coun­try does not have clear­ly de­fined de­car­bon­i­sa­tion path­ways, it will be dif­fi­cult for long-term in­vest­ment in­to the sec­tor.

And with­out in­vest­ment, he em­pha­sised, pro­duc­tion will de­cline.

“At the end of 2021 the pro­duc­tion of nat­ur­al gas fell to just two and a half bil­lion cu­bic feet per day, a long way be­low the peak pro­duc­tion and in­stalled ca­pac­i­ty of about 4.1, 4.2 bil­lion cu­bic feet per day,” Ma­habir cit­ed.

He made the re­marks while speak­ing at the “Con­ver­sa­tions on En­er­gy and the Econ­o­my” host­ed by the En­er­gy Cham­ber and held at Hy­att Re­gency on Wednes­day af­ter­noon.

But over the past few months Ma­habir said there have been some pos­i­tive in­crease in pro­duc­tion with new de­vel­op­ments com­ing on­line.

“How­ev­er, the stark re­al­i­ty is that even with these new de­vel­op­ments it is go­ing to be a strug­gle to just main­tain cur­rent pro­duc­tion lev­els over the next few years,” Ma­habir warned.

Not­ing that the lo­cal en­er­gy in­dus­try faces “an in­ter­est­ing dual chal­lenge” Ma­habir ex­plained first­ly to re­duce the down­ward trend in oil and gas pro­duc­tion while in­vest­ing in de­car­bon­is­ing en­er­gy sys­tems.

“These two chal­lenges might seem a bit con­tra­dic­to­ry but they are ac­tu­al­ly close­ly in­ter­twined and com­pli­men­ta­ry,” Ma­habir said, adding that over the last few years many glob­al com­pa­nies have placed green house gas emis­sions re­duc­tions as a key strate­gic con­sid­er­a­tion.

And hav­ing net ze­ro tar­gets, Ma­habir said, has had a pro­found im­pact on the glob­al en­er­gy sys­tem and how com­pa­nies are as­sess­ing in­vest­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, he not­ed the Russ­ian in­va­sion of the Ukraine has added a new fo­cus on en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty which has led to high­er prices in the short term and a re­newed fo­cus on in­vest­ment in oil, gas and even coal.

But, Ma­habir said, this does not mean that the dri­ve for net ze­ro has gone away, not­ing that Eu­rope is fo­cus­ing more in­vest­ment on do­mes­tic en­er­gy sources in­clud­ing so­lar and wind and in some cas­es nu­clear en­er­gy.

Ac­cord­ing to Ma­habir as the clean­est of the fos­sil fu­el nat­ur­al gas plays a cru­cial role in help­ing re­duce the emis­sions from coal fired elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­a­tion and in­te­grates well with in­ter­mit­tent re­new­ables as well as a key feed stock for many of the petro­chem­i­cals set to play a key role in the en­er­gy trans­mis­sion.