GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

T&T has been in­volved in the pe­tro­le­um sec­tor for over 100 years, un­der­tak­ing con­sid­er­able oil and gas ex­plo­ration ac­tiv­i­ty on land, in shal­low wa­ter and more re­cent­ly in the deep­wa­ter.

The en­er­gy sec­tor ac­counts for around 45 per cent of the coun­try’s GDP and is the core dri­ver of the econ­o­my.

The 2025 bud­get was based on an oil price of US$77.80 and nat­ur­al gas price of US$3.59 per mmb­tu.

Not­ing the volatil­i­ty of en­er­gy prices, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert said the 2025 prices were alow­er than the 2024 bud­get ba­sis of US$85 and US$5.

Pro­ject­ed rev­enue from the 2025 plan is $54.224B and the pro­ject­ed deficit is $5.517B.

The Busi­ness Guardian took a deep­er dive in­to the monies al­lo­cat­ed to the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries for the 2025 fis­cal year, which in­di­cat­ed that the al­lo­ca­tion for re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture of $677.02 mil­lion for 2025, 28.81 per cent less than the re­vised es­ti­mate of $951.01 mil­lion for 2024. The min­istry’s $677.02 mil­lion re­cur­rent al­lo­ca­tion for 2025 is 66.95 per cent less than the $2.04 bil­lion ac­tu­al al­lo­ca­tion for 2023.

A fur­ther break­down re­vealed that un­der cur­rent trans­fers and sub­si­dies showed a re­duc­tion of the al­lo­ca­tion from 2023 to 2025.

In 2023, ac­tu­al ex­pen­di­ture was $1.96 bil­lion while in 2024 re­vised es­ti­mates were $662.93 mil­lion and that fig­ure saw a fur­ther re­duc­tion with es­ti­mates in 2025 of $521.82 mil­lion.

Ex­am­in­ing cur­rent trans­fers and sub­si­dies ac­cord­ing to sub head house­holds, showed there was a short­fall in the sub­sidy of the sale of pe­tro­le­um prod­ucts in 2023, when the ac­tu­al ex­pen­di­ture was $1.60 bil­lion. In 2024, re­vised es­ti­mates for the fu­el sub­sidy amount­ed to $470 mil­lion. How­ev­er in 2025, the al­lo­ca­tion for the fu­el sub­sidy is pro­ject­ed to be $500 mil­lion.

It can be in­ferred that the price of fu­el com­ing out of the US Gulf Coast would have been low­er in 2024.

As it per­tains to trans­fers to state en­ter­pris­es, an en­vi­ron­men­tal in­dem­ni­ty to the Pow­er­Gen Com­pa­ny of T&T was $3.3 mil­lion in ac­tu­al ex­pen­di­ture and in 2024 this fig­ure de­creased to $2.31 mil­lion in re­vised es­ti­mates. Ac­cord­ing to 2025 es­ti­mates, there was an in­crease as monies amount­ed to $2.5 mil­lion

En­vi­ron­men­tal in­dem­ni­ties are typ­i­cal­ly ex­e­cut­ed by the bor­row­er and the guar­an­tor col­lec­tive­ly as the in­dem­n­i­tor and in­clude rep­re­sen­ta­tions and covenants re­lat­ing to haz­ardous sub­stances and, most im­por­tant­ly, from a lender’s per­spec­tive, an in­dem­ni­fi­ca­tion in favour of the lender for any claims or loss­es aris­ing from haz­ardous sub­stances on the mort­gaged prop­er­ty.

Pow­er­Gen’s four chim­ney stacks, stood at Fla­ment Street, Port-of-Spain for 63 years be­fore be­ing de­com­mis­sioned in Jan­u­ary 2016.

The share­hold­ers in the com­pa­ny are the T&T Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (TTEC) with a 51 per cent share­hold­ing, MaruEn­er­gy Trinidad LLC (owned by Japan­ese multi­na­tion­al - Marubeni) with a 39 per cent share­hold­ing and NEL Pow­er Hold­ings Lim­it­ed with a 10 per cent own­er­ship.

Alutech still get­ting funds

The Min­istry of En­er­gy is al­so con­tin­u­ing to pump mon­ey in­to Alutech Ltd (Alutech), a com­pa­ny that was es­tab­lished in 2009 to man­u­fac­ture high-qual­i­ty alu­mini­um down­stream prod­ucts, in­clud­ing pressed alu­mini­um coils, bil­lets and wheel rims. When the gov­ern­ment changed in 2010, the project was scrapped.

Alutech re­ceived an eq­ui­ty in­jec­tion of $6.68 mil­lion in 2023, while in the 2024 re­vised es­ti­mates amount­ed to $720,000 and in 2025 no es­ti­mates were record­ed.

Alutech was of­fi­cial­ly re­launched on Oc­to­ber 3, 2018, by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley when he de­liv­ered the fea­ture ad­dress at the event.

Row­ley then told the au­di­ence of dig­ni­taries, busi­ness­es and com­mu­ni­ty groups that in 18 month’s time Trinidad and To­ba­go would join pur­chasers who buy raw alu­mini­um in­got, bring it to the fac­to­ry in T&T and start man­u­fac­tur­ing to sup­ply an area of growth and de­mand by mak­ing alu­mini­um car wheels for the trans­port in­dus­try, main­ly for mar­kets in Cen­tral and South Amer­i­ca.

The fa­cil­i­ty was tout­ed as the first of its kind in the Caribbean with ro­bots play­ing key roles in the man­u­fac­ture of pressed alu­mini­um coils, bil­lets and wheel rims.

How­ev­er, in 2023 and in 2024 there were no monies for ac­tu­al ex­pen­di­ture and re­vised es­ti­mates re­spec­tive­ly, but the 2025 es­ti­mates in­di­cate a pro­posed ex­pen­di­ture of $5.45 mil­lion sug­gest­ing there may be more vis­i­ble ef­forts to bring the plant to fruition.

Look­ing at oth­er as­pects of trans­fers and sub­si­dies showed large sums in an­nu­al sub­ven­tion to the Gas Ex­port­ing Coun­tries Fo­rum (GECF).

For in­stance, in 2023 ac­tu­al ex­pen­di­ture was $5.76 mil­lion; in 2024 that fig­ure re­mained rel­a­tive­ly con­sis­tent with re­vised es­ti­mates of $5.77 mil­lion and for 2025 es­ti­mates of $ 5.95 mil­lion.

The GECF is an in­ter­na­tion­al­ly recog­nised or­gan­i­sa­tion com­prised of the world’s lead­ing gas pro­duc­ers aimed at rep­re­sent­ing and pro­mot­ing their mu­tu­al in­ter­ests. The ob­jec­tives of the GECF are to sup­port the sov­er­eign rights of mem­ber coun­tries over their nat­ur­al gas re­sources and their abil­i­ties to in­de­pen­dent­ly plan and man­age the sus­tain­able, ef­fi­cient and en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly con­scious de­vel­op­ment, use and con­ser­va­tion of nat­ur­al gas re­sources for the ben­e­fit of their cit­i­zens.

The GECF al­so seeks to pro­mote di­a­logue be­tween gas pro­duc­ing na­tions and con­sum­ing coun­tries. To­geth­er, the GECF mem­bers cur­rent­ly ac­count for al­most 70 per cent of the world’s cur­rent proven re­serves of nat­ur­al gas.

Mean­while, fig­ur­ers for T&T Up­stream and Down­stream En­er­gy Op­er­a­tions Co Ltd not­ed ac­tu­al ex­pen­di­ture of $500,000 in 2023, but there was a jump to $964,000 in re­vised es­ti­mates in 2024 but that num­ber went down to $500.000 in 2025 es­ti­mates.

TTUDEO­CL is a whol­ly-owned state en­ter­prise which was in­cor­po­rat­ed on March 28, 2018 to spear­head in­vest­ment ini­tia­tives in the en­er­gy sec­tor.

The com­pa­ny has been charged with the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to pro­vide a nat­ur­al gas sup­ply to the gas-to-liq­uids (GTL) plant that was be­ing de­vel­oped in Pointe-a-Pierre by Ni­Quan En­er­gy Trinidad Lim­it­ed (Ni­Quan).

At a PNM post-bud­get meet­ing in Bel­mont on Oc­to­ber 4, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young was con­fi­dent that this coun­try’s en­er­gy sec­tor will con­tin­ue to play a key role in fos­ter­ing eco­nom­ic growth.

He not­ed key en­er­gy agree­ments which gov­ern­ment se­cured dur­ing its tenure in­clud­ing the Man­a­tee, Cocuina-Man­akin and Drag­on and gas projects.

Gov­ern­ment se­cured a 30-year li­cence with Venezuela for the Drag­on field in De­cem­ber last year.

At a cer­e­mo­ny on Sep­tem­ber 27, this year in Point Fortin to com­mem­o­rate the 25th an­niver­sary of the found­ing of At­lantic LNG and to cel­e­brate the agree­ment signed last De­cem­ber to re­struc­ture the com­pa­ny, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley as­sured that Gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to ag­gres­sive­ly pur­sue ini­tia­tives to en­sure the long term vi­a­bil­i­ty of the en­er­gy sec­tor and the econ­o­my.