By An­tho­ny E. Paul

Pic­ture a fam­i­ly whose mon­ey no longer stretch­es to the end of the month. Food costs more, the light bill has gone up and school ex­pens­es still have to be paid. Find­ing more mon­ey mat­ters. So does ask­ing whether mon­ey is leak­ing out, whether some­thing is sit­ting idle, or whether some­thing the fam­i­ly al­ready owns, or knows how to do, could earn more.

With the 2027 Bud­get due to­mor­row, Trinidad and To­ba­go (T&T) faces a ver­sion of that prob­lem. Gov­ern­ment needs rev­enue and the coun­try needs for­eign ex­change (FX). The re­sponse has in­clud­ed tax­es, levies, fees, fines and penal­ties. Some may be nec­es­sary; a nar­row tax base cre­ates prob­lems of its own. But be­fore reach­ing fur­ther in­to the peo­ple’s pock­ets, we should ask whether we are get­ting enough from what we al­ready own.

My ar­ti­cle last Sun­day, head­lined "From wind­fall to wealth: Learn­ing from our­selves," asked what pe­tro­le­um wealth means. To­day's ar­ti­cle of­fers two tools for judg­ing the bud­get:

—Five places to look, which broad­ens the search for rev­enue and val­ue; and

—Pe­tro­le­um Sec­tor Bud­get Score­card, whose 13 ques­tions test whether an­nounce­ments can de­liv­er.

To­geth­er, they help us look be­yond the im­me­di­ate arith­metic to the choic­es shap­ing our fu­ture earn­ings.

De­clin­ing pro­duc­tion has not made pe­tro­le­um unim­por­tant. Re­cent Min­istry of Fi­nance, Cen­tral Bank and IMF re­ports show en­er­gy sup­ply­ing about 22.5 per cent of GDP in 2024 and $17.2 bil­lion in pro­vi­sion­al fis­cal 2025 rev­enue, against $30.4 bil­lion in 2022. En­er­gy com­pa­nies sup­plied 73.6 per cent of au­tho­rised deal­ers’ FX pur­chas­es above US$20,000 for the pe­ri­od Jan­u­ary to April 2026, ac­cord­ing to the lat­est Cen­tral Bank Mon­e­tary Pol­i­cy Re­port. These dif­fer­ent mea­sures tell a com­mon sto­ry: how we man­age this sec­tor still shapes what we can af­ford.

More pro­duc­tion is es­sen­tial, but it does not au­to­mat­i­cal­ly de­liv­er more na­tion­al val­ue. Gas can be­come LNG, am­mo­nia or methanol, sup­ply elec­tric­i­ty, or sup­port fur­ther man­u­fac­tur­ing. Plants, pipelines, ports and the ser­vices around them cre­ate val­ue too. What the coun­try keeps de­pends on prices, costs, fis­cal terms, con­trac­tu­al oblig­a­tions and over­sight along those path­ways. Count­ing mol­e­cules tells us on­ly part of the sto­ry.

Five places to look

Seen this way, our choic­es are wider than rais­ing tax­es or wait­ing for pro­duc­tion to re­cov­er. There are at least five places to look:

* Raise more from ex­ist­ing ac­tiv­i­ty through tax­es, levies, fees and com­pli­ance;

* Col­lect what is due and close leaks by ver­i­fy­ing prices, costs and pay­ments;

* Pro­duce and re­new re­sources through ex­plo­ration, in­vest­ment, re­de­vel­op­ment and bet­ter re­source knowl­edge;

* Earn more from ex­ist­ing re­sources and as­sets through bet­ter gas al­lo­ca­tion, in­fra­struc­ture use, prod­ucts and ser­vices; and

* In­vest to­day’s in­come in to­mor­row’s se­cu­ri­ty through pro­duc­tive ca­pac­i­ty, in­sti­tu­tions and sav­ings.

We need el­e­ments of all five. A levy draws more from ac­tiv­i­ty al­ready tak­ing place; a re­newed field or an ex­port busi­ness ex­pands what we can earn. Bet­ter over­sight can re­cov­er val­ue al­ready due, while rein­vest­ment pre­pares us for the day the re­source earns less. These choic­es work to­geth­er, but they do dif­fer­ent jobs. The bud­get should ex­plain the bal­ance, rather than leave cit­i­zens to as­sume that high­er col­lec­tions mean a stronger econ­o­my.

Tax­ing more re­dis­trib­utes in­come al­ready be­ing gen­er­at­ed. Cre­at­ing more val­ue en­larges the econ­o­my’s ca­pac­i­ty to gen­er­ate it.

Man­age the na­tion­al gas port­fo­lio

Con­sid­er the choic­es fac­ing the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC). A de­ci­sion can im­prove its ac­counts while chang­ing the prospects of work­ers, sup­pli­ers and oth­er busi­ness­es else­where in the econ­o­my. The price earned from sell­ing nat­ur­al gas mat­ters, but so does what hap­pens to the gas af­ter­wards: the prod­ucts, em­ploy­ment and in­dus­tri­al ca­pa­bil­i­ty it sup­ports.

That is why re­main­ing and new gas should be man­aged as a na­tion­al port­fo­lio. A bet­ter gas-sale re­turn may come along­side few­er jobs or weak­er in­dus­tri­al link­ages. Com­pare fis­cal re­ceipts, NGC sus­tain­abil­i­ty, net FX re­tained, lo­cal pur­chas­es, sup­ply com­mit­ments and fu­ture op­tions be­fore de­cid­ing where gas should go. The point is to make those choic­es de­lib­er­ate­ly, with a clear ac­count of what the coun­try gains and gives up.

Where does the next mol­e­cule cre­ate the great­est na­tion­al val­ue?

Test the fore­cast and pro­tect sav­ings

The same care be­longs in the bud­get’s fore­casts. Oil and gas price and pro­duc­tion as­sump­tions shape ex­pect­ed rev­enue, spend­ing and bor­row­ing. If the as­sump­tions prove op­ti­mistic, the con­se­quences reach well be­yond the pe­tro­le­um in­dus­try. Pub­lish the ba­sis, com­pare past fore­casts with out­comes, and ex­plain how rev­enue es­ti­mates rec­on­cile with Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund (HSF) rules. Gas fore­casts should re­flect At­lantic LNG’s rene­go­ti­at­ed in­ter­na­tion­al price bas­ket, in­clud­ing Brent, and the costs and con­trac­tu­al terms de­ter­min­ing lo­cal re­ceipts.

The HSF cov­ers oil and gas. De­posits de­pend on ex­cess qual­i­fy­ing pe­tro­le­um rev­enue. For es­ti­mates oth­er than roy­al­ties, the Act spec­i­fies an eleven-year price av­er­age: five pre­ced­ing years, the cur­rent year and five pro­ject­ed years. Pub­lish­ing that cal­cu­la­tion, de­posits and with­draw­al grounds would let cit­i­zens judge whether cur­rent spend­ing pro­tects fu­ture sav­ings.

Gov­er­nance must rise with the stakes

The re­fin­ery pos­es an­oth­er test. Restart­ing a plant does not erase Petrotrin’s debt or en­vi­ron­men­tal li­a­bil­i­ties. Its case should ex­am­ine as­set val­u­a­tion, restart and op­er­at­ing costs, crude sup­ply, mar­kets, fi­nanc­ing, net FX and who car­ries the down­side. Work­ers and com­mu­ni­ties de­serve a vi­able eco­nom­ic fu­ture; that makes a cred­i­ble as­sess­ment more im­por­tant. We need to know what the pro­posed trans­ac­tion would com­mit the coun­try to, as well as what it might earn.

Par­lia­ment’s Sep­tem­ber pro­cure­ment amend­ment Bill pro­pos­es ex­emp­tions in­clud­ing oil and gas. Com­mer­cial com­plex­i­ty makes in­de­pen­dent scruti­ny and dis­clo­sure of State oblig­a­tions es­pe­cial­ly im­por­tant for trans­ac­tions out­side nor­mal over­sight of the pro­cure­ment reg­u­la­tor over­sight.

Com­plex­i­ty should in­crease the stan­dard of gov­er­nance.

The Min­istry of En­er­gy con­firms that Exxon­Mo­bil’s TTUD-1 award, cov­er­ing sev­en ul­tra-deep ar­eas, was ne­go­ti­at­ed out­side the com­pet­i­tive round. How were terms bench­marked and na­tion­al val­ue pro­tect­ed? Li­cence re­newals, as­set trans­fers and cross-bor­der gas arrange­ments de­serve the same scruti­ny.

The work con­tin­ues af­ter sig­na­ture. Re­lat­ed-par­ty prices and fi­nanc­ing or man­age­ment charges can af­fect tax­able in­come and lo­cal­ly avail­able FX. Us­ing lo­cal as­sets to sup­port over­seas in­vest­ment rais­es ques­tions about risk and de­duc­tions; it does not es­tab­lish abuse. A pay­ment can be record­ed cor­rect­ly and still re­quire scruti­ny of its price or con­trac­tu­al ba­sis. Au­dits must dis­tin­guish le­git­i­mate trans­ac­tions from leak­age, with the ex­per­tise to fol­low the mon­ey through the arrange­ments.

Suc­ces­sive bud­gets have promised trans­fer-pric­ing re­form. This one should say what is op­er­a­tional, what re­mains to be im­ple­ment­ed and who will de­liv­er it. The Pe­tro­le­um Tax­es Act al­ready pro­vides for a Per­ma­nent Pe­tro­le­um Pric­ing Com­mit­tee to ad­vise on fair mar­ket val­ues and pro­cess­ing fees. What ev­i­dence will show that this mech­a­nism is be­ing used ef­fec­tive­ly?

The ac­com­pa­ny­ing score­card brings these choic­es to­geth­er. Gas al­lo­ca­tion asks where scarce sup­plies cre­ate most val­ue; the re­fin­ery asks how we as­sess as­sets and oblig­a­tions; ne­go­ti­at­ed awards ask how we pro­tect val­ue with­out com­pe­ti­tion. The fi­nal ar­ti­cle will ex­plore how to turn these ques­tions in­to ac­tion, in­clud­ing re­gion­al earn­ings. When the Min­is­ter fin­ish­es speak­ing, ask:

What has ac­tu­al­ly changed that will al­low T&T to cre­ate and re­tain more val­ue from its en­er­gy re­sources to­mor­row than it does to­day?

An­tho­ny E Paul is chair­man of The Lloyd Best In­sti­tute of the Caribbean (In­de­pen­dent Thought for Caribbean Free­dom) and an en­er­gy gov­er­nance, pol­i­cy and strat­e­gy ad­vi­sor.

This ar­ti­cle ad­dress­es strate­gic, pol­i­cy and in­sti­tu­tion­al ques­tions; it is not le­gal ad­vice.