Opposition Member of Parliament David Lee says that Energy Minister Stuart Young’s review of the energy sector in 2022 was nothing but a “deceptive fabrication” to cover up the reality that T&T’s energy sector has collapsed due to this government’s chaos and dismal performance.
Lee, in a statement issued hours after Young posted a video reviewing his ministry’s performance for 2022, said it was “utterly ridiculous” that Young had claimed that T&T’s energy sector received global recognition in the last year when this nation has been in the energy industry for over 100 years, “creating a global brand decades before and was once viewed as the Caribbean’s leading energy economy before decimation by this government.”
“The foreign energy trips of this government were not a result of global recognition but this government being forced to go “beg” energy companies for investments as seven years without growth and incentives in our energy sector had made T&T globally unattractive,” he stated.
“Minister Young needs to end the political delusion and admit that higher energy revenues had nothing to do with this government’s policies but were a result of the European war,” Lee stated.
Lee stated Young highlighting Heritage Petroleum as a success story was “scraping the barrel” for achievements because after four years the State-owned company is yet to surpass the oil production of Petrotrin. Lee said this nation’s entire oil production for the last fiscal year fell at least 25,000 barrels short of the promised target.
“It was even more absurd to boast about NGC’s profitability when as the sole aggregator of natural gas in T&T it has always been profitable except when it made a loss for the first time under this government,” Lee stated.
Lee stated that this year’s flop of the deep water bid where only four of the 17 blocks received bids was not success but rather a reflection of how “unattractive” the energy sector has become under this government.