The lat­est En­er­gy Ser­vices Sec­tor Sur­vey (ES­SS), con­duct­ed by the En­er­gy Cham­ber, re­veals a de­cline in both the vol­ume and val­ue of busi­ness dur­ing the first quar­ter of 2026. Ac­cord­ing to the find­ings, 60 per cent of re­spon­dents re­port­ed that the val­ue of their busi­ness was low­er than nor­mal, while 56 per cent in­di­cat­ed that their vol­ume of busi­ness fell be­low typ­i­cal lev­els.

This da­ta sug­gests that the en­er­gy ser­vices and con­tract­ing com­mu­ni­ty in Trinidad and To­ba­go ex­e­cut­ed few­er projects, with many firms earn­ing less for the ser­vices pro­vid­ed.

Among the com­pa­nies re­port­ing low­er-than-nor­mal ac­tiv­i­ty, 72 per cent iden­ti­fied de­creased de­mand for their ser­vices, 66 per cent re­port­ed few­er busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ties, 38 per cent re­port­ed a loss of con­tracts, and 11 per cent said they were forced to pro­vide few­er ser­vices.

Con­verse­ly, the small seg­ment of com­pa­nies that ex­pe­ri­enced an uptick in ac­tiv­i­ty at­trib­uted their growth to in­creased de­mand, the in­tro­duc­tion of new ser­vices and the ac­qui­si­tion of ad­di­tion­al con­tracts.

The out­look for the sec­ond quar­ter re­mains cau­tious. Fifty per cent (50 per cent) of re­spon­dents an­tic­i­pate a low­er vol­ume of busi­ness in Q2 2026, and 54 per cent ex­pect the val­ue of their busi­ness to con­tin­ue to de­cline.

The cur­rent ex­pe­ri­ence of these com­pa­nies high­lights a crit­i­cal need for fur­ther up­stream in­vest­ment.

Typ­i­cal­ly, a down­turn in up­stream ac­tiv­i­ty di­rect­ly con­stricts op­por­tu­ni­ties for the en­er­gy ser­vices sec­tor. Low­er in­vest­ment lev­els re­sult in few­er green­field projects, which are gen­er­al­ly high­er in val­ue.

At present, the in­dus­try is see­ing a shift to­ward brown­field projects, pri­mar­i­ly main­te­nance-based work, which tends to car­ry a low­er fi­nan­cial val­ue.

While sev­er­al na­tion­al projects cur­rent­ly in the pipeline will pro­vide some re­lief, strength­en­ing this project queue is es­sen­tial for the long-term health of the ser­vices sec­tor and the broad­er sup­ply chain.

Projects like Shell’s Man­a­tee and Aphrodite are al­ready be­ing de­vel­oped, along with the EOG/bpTT Co­conut project, which is in ex­e­cu­tion with the plat­form be­ing con­struct­ed in the TOF­CO yard.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, bpTT’s fourth sub­sea project, Gin­ger, re­mains on sched­ule to de­liv­er first gas in 2027. The largest project in ex­e­cu­tion at the mo­ment is Shell Man­a­tee, set to come on­stream at the end of 2027. By all re­ports, the ex­e­cu­tion of these ma­jor projects is pro­ceed­ing as planned.

Projects fur­ther down the pipeline seek­ing a fi­nal in­vest­ment de­ci­sion (FID), such as the Wood­side/bp Ca­lyp­so deep­wa­ter gas project, bpTT’s Frangi­pani and Kanikon­na projects, Peren­co’s Onyx field, and an­oth­er EOG/bp joint ven­ture, Beryl, will like­ly im­prove the ser­vice sec­tor’s per­cep­tion when they en­ter ex­e­cu­tion phase.

In ad­di­tion, Exxon’s de­vel­op­ment of the new block UD1 and in­di­ca­tions that CNOOC will sign two new PSCs will cer­tain­ly add ex­cite­ment as these projects de­vel­op.

The Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries, Dr. the Hon. Roodal Mooni­lal has ini­ti­at­ed the cre­ation of an En­er­gy Ac­cel­er­a­tor Hub, which aims to bring to­geth­er key de­ci­sion-mak­ers and reg­u­la­tors in­volved in the ap­proval process.

This will es­sen­tial­ly short­en the de­liv­ery time for projects, bring­ing them on­stream faster, while en­sur­ing work be­comes avail­able to con­trac­tors dur­ing the con­struc­tion phase, thus in­creas­ing lo­cal con­tent con­tri­bu­tion. This should al­so bring re­lief to the con­trac­tor com­mu­ni­ty as more projects be­come vi­able. The En­er­gy Cham­ber ful­ly sup­ports this ini­tia­tive.

The En­er­gy Cham­ber’s ES­SS is a quar­ter­ly as­sess­ment tool map­ping the per­for­mance and op­ti­mism of en­er­gy ser­vice con­trac­tors. By pro­vid­ing da­ta on busi­ness con­fi­dence and the op­er­a­tional phe­nom­e­na im­pact­ing the in­dus­try, the sur­vey of­fers a clear pic­ture of the sec­tor’s cur­rent health and fu­ture prospects.