GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Se­nior Re­porter

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

For over a cen­tu­ry, T&T has been in the oil busi­ness and for all 63 years of its in­de­pen­dence, the na­tion has leaned heav­i­ly on this re­source.

As econ­o­mist Dr Mar­i­ano Browne re­flect­ed on CNC 3’s The Morn­ing Brew yes­ter­day, the ques­tion is not just whether the coun­try dropped the ball. It is whether it ever tru­ly held it.

“There’s no ques­tion we could al­ways have been fur­ther along,” Browne said.

The is­sue, he ex­plained, lies not in the pres­ence of oil and gas, but in how the coun­try has en­gaged with the en­er­gy sec­tor.

Un­like na­tions in the Mid­dle East that took bold, hands-on roles in shap­ing their en­er­gy in­dus­tries, T&T re­mained on the side­lines—invit­ing for­eign cap­i­tal, but rarely par­tic­i­pat­ing in the risk.

Browne ar­gued that the coun­try has found it­self on the weak­er side of ne­go­ti­a­tions with en­er­gy com­pa­nies.

While some Mid­dle East­ern states be­came ac­tive stake­hold­ers—steer­ing the di­rec­tion of their en­er­gy sec­tors and in­vest­ing di­rect­ly in their de­vel­op­ment—T&T opt­ed to re­main de­pen­dent on ex­ter­nal in­vestors.

“In­stead of mere­ly invit­ing for­eign cap­i­tal, they (Mid­dle East­ern coun­tries) be­came part and par­cel of the risk-tak­ing,” Browne ex­plained.

He ac­knowl­edged that the com­par­i­son is not en­tire­ly equal.

T&T holds less than one per cent of the world’s hy­dro­car­bon re­sources, a lim­i­ta­tion that has shaped its eco­nom­ic pos­ture.

Still, Browne em­pha­sised that the coun­try’s small size and lim­it­ed re­serves should not have pre­clud­ed it from de­vel­op­ing the tech­no­log­i­cal ca­pac­i­ty and in­sti­tu­tion­al strength to man­age its own en­er­gy fu­ture.

“We’ve al­ways been on the wrong ne­go­ti­at­ing end of en­er­gy sec­tor com­pa­nies, where­as some of the com­pa­nies in the Mid­dle East have de­cid­ed to take a much more hands-on po­si­tion in terms of the di­rec­tion of those com­pa­nies and al­so the di­rec­tion of the sec­tor. What do I mean by that? In a sense that they be­come ac­tive par­tic­i­pants. In oth­er words, in­stead of mere­ly invit­ing for­eign cap­i­tal, they have been part and par­cel of the risk-tak­ing.

“Now, their po­si­tion is a lot dif­fer­ent to us. You have to re­mem­ber that Trinidad and To­ba­go has less than one per cent of the world’s hy­dro­car­bon re­sources. That’s im­por­tant to un­der­stand.

“So there’s al­ways been a dif­fi­cul­ty. We’ve al­ways been, in a sense, tak­ers of for­eign cap­i­tal, as­sist­ing from in­vestors. And I think that’s a sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ence to where we are and where some of the Mid­dle East in­vestors are in terms of how they have in­vest­ed and what they’ve in­vest­ed in.... But they have had a lot more oil and a lot more gas, if you want, to take some risks in a way that Trinidad and To­ba­go did not. Oil and gas is im­por­tant to the Trinidad and To­ba­go econ­o­my but you have to re­mem­ber it in the con­text of our size and that is the is­sue. We’ve al­ways been ne­go­ti­at­ing from a po­si­tion of weak­ness, in a sense that we don’t con­trol it.

“It may be our min­er­al re­sources. It may be in our wa­ters. But we’ve nev­er de­vel­oped the tech­nol­o­gy and or the ca­pac­i­ty to rein­vest and to do it our­selves,” he said.

Browne not­ed that T&T has of­ten found it­self at a dis­ad­van­tage when deal­ing with for­eign in­vestors who have the mon­ey, ex­per­tise, and con­trol over en­er­gy projects.

“...If you’re ne­go­ti­at­ing with a for­eign sup­pli­er or for­eign in­vestor who has the mon­ey to do every­thing and you have lim­it­ed knowl­edge of what’s tak­ing place. So, it’s a type of in­vest­ment that we’ve had to do.

“And we have not tak­en con­trol of our des­tiny in that re­gard. And that’s a crit­i­cal dif­fer­ence be­tween our­selves and what is tak­ing place in the Mid­dle East,” he not­ed.