Months af­ter an­nounc­ing plans to re-en­gage with Grena­da con­cern­ing the pos­si­ble ex­plo­ration of oil and gas there, En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal met with the Prime Min­is­ter of Grena­da Dick­on Mitchell con­cern­ing the mat­ter.

In a re­lease on Tues­day, the min­istry con­firmed Dr Mooni­lal met with PM Mitchell, Grena­di­an At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Min­is­ter for Le­gal Af­fairs Sen­a­tor Claudette Joseph, Rod­ney George, ad­vi­sor, Min­istry of In­fra­struc­ture, Pub­lic Util­i­ties, Civ­il Avi­a­tion and Trans­porta­tion, and ad­vi­sor in the Min­istry of Cli­mate Re­silience, the En­vi­ron­ment and Re­new­able En­er­gy; and Naz­im Burke, chair­man of Grena­da’s Hy­dro­car­bons Tech­ni­cal Work­ing Group, Min­istry of In­fra­struc­ture, Pub­lic Util­i­ties, Civ­il Avi­a­tion and Trans­porta­tion.

These meet­ings were held over a two-day pe­ri­od last week­end.

The re­lease con­firmed that dis­cus­sions fo­cussed on ex­plor­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for col­lab­o­ra­tion with­in the oil and gas sec­tor.

Min­is­ter Moo­nial ex­pand­ed on what was dis­cussed in a brief com­ment to the Guardian yes­ter­day.

He said it was a very pro­duc­tive meet­ing, dur­ing which mat­ters of en­er­gy co­op­er­a­tion be­tween T&T and Grena­da were dis­cussed.

“The Prime Min­is­ter has cab­i­net re­spon­si­bil­i­ties for En­er­gy, and this was a man­date giv­en by the ho­n­ourable Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, Prime Min­is­ter of T&T to the Min­istry of En­er­gy to fur­ther dis­cus­sions, col­lab­o­ra­tions and co­op­er­a­tion with the gov­ern­ment of Grena­da as they de­vel­op a hy­dro­car­bon sec­tor giv­en some promis­ing de­vel­op­ments in their off­shore basin, the Nut­meg. So we have had dis­cus­sions, we will con­tin­ue to have dis­cus­sions but at a more tech­ni­cal, in­sti­tu­tion­al and le­gal frame­work per­spec­tive.”

He added, “It has been very pos­i­tive, and we ex­pect to con­tin­ue those dis­cus­sions in a few short weeks to fur­ther and deep­en our col­lab­o­ra­tion par­tic­u­lar­ly as it re­lates to the off­shore de­vel­op­ments that the Grena­da gov­ern­ment has ear­marked for fu­ture ex­plo­ration and pro­duc­tion.”

Dur­ing the swear­ing-in cer­e­mo­ny for Cab­i­net min­is­ters on May 3, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar man­dat­ed the new­ly ap­point­ed Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries to ur­gent­ly en­gage with the Gov­ern­ment of Grena­da with a view to fos­ter­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion in the en­er­gy sec­tor.

The re­lease stat­ed, “In ful­fil­ment of this man­date, the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries prompt­ly ini­ti­at­ed con­tact through for­mal cor­re­spon­dence, which cul­mi­nat­ed in re­cent in-per­son meet­ings be­tween the re­spec­tive par­ties.”

Min­is­ter Mooni­lal high­light­ed T&T’s ro­bust and well-es­tab­lished en­er­gy in­fra­struc­ture dur­ing the meet­ing, as well as the ex­ten­sive ex­pe­ri­ence and tech­ni­cal knowl­edge the coun­try has gained as a long­stand­ing glob­al hy­dro­car­bon pro­duc­er.

In 2012, T&T and the Gov­ern­ment of Grena­da signed a Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing (MoU) for co­op­er­a­tion on en­er­gy de­vel­op­ment.

The re­lease said, “This re­newed en­gage­ment builds up­on that MoU and sig­nals Trinidad and To­ba­go’s readi­ness to share its oil and gas ex­per­tise in sup­port of Grena­da’s en­er­gy de­vel­op­ment.”

Prime Min­is­ter Mitchell said he wel­comed the op­por­tu­ni­ty for col­lab­o­ra­tion and ex­pressed Grena­da’s com­mit­ment to deep­en­ing part­ner­ships with Trinidad and To­ba­go, es­pe­cial­ly in the area of sup­port ser­vices as Grena­da is at the ear­ly stage of as­sess­ing its hy­dro­car­bon re­source po­ten­tial.”

It was not­ed that the trans­fer of skills and tech­nol­o­gy could bring mu­tu­al ben­e­fits to the peo­ple of T&T and the peo­ple of Grena­da through jobs, in­come, and op­por­tu­ni­ties.