En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young yes­ter­day ad­vo­cat­ed that nat­ur­al gas be used as a tran­si­tion fu­el, stress­ing the im­por­tance of us­ing sov­er­eign re­sources and en­sur­ing en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty.

He made this com­ment at an ex­tra­or­di­nary min­is­te­r­i­al meet­ing while at­tend­ing the 7th Gas Ex­port­ing Coun­tries Fo­rum (GECF) Sum­mit in Al­giers, the De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Re­pub­lic of Al­ge­ria.

Young said it is in­cum­bent for lead­ers of nat­ur­al gas-pro­duc­ing coun­tries to raise their voic­es glob­al­ly in the con­ver­sa­tion of en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty and food se­cu­ri­ty, and to de­mand the abil­i­ty and the op­por­tu­ni­ties to utilise sov­er­eign re­sources of nat­ur­al gas-rich coun­tries.

He said it is im­por­tant that mem­bers of the GECF work to­geth­er not on­ly in the pro­mo­tion of the use of nat­ur­al gas, which will in­evitably fea­ture as the en­er­gy source for decades to come in a clean en­er­gy en­vi­ron­ment, “but al­so for us to work to­geth­er to ex­ploit our gas re­sources.”

The min­is­ter iden­ti­fied that T&T, as small as it is, con­tin­ues to play a vi­tal role in pro­vid­ing en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty, not on­ly for Latin Amer­i­ca and the Cari­com re­gion but al­so as far away as Eu­rope.

“I call up­on us once again to use the body of the GECF to raise the plat­form and the voic­es for nat­ur­al gas.”

Young al­so made a call to sup­port the African con­ti­nent’s abil­i­ty to in­de­pen­dent­ly de­vel­op its re­sources for en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty in that part of the world.

The Drag­on Gas Deal was al­so high­light­ed as an ex­am­ple of a project that al­lows two GECF mem­ber coun­tries to move for­ward to de­vel­op re­sources.”

The min­is­ter in clos­ing said he is look­ing for­ward to a clos­er col­lab­o­ra­tion as a unit­ed voice “some­times to push back on those who make de­ci­sions in far-off places that di­rect­ly af­fect our abil­i­ty to de­vel­op our re­sources.”

The GECF Sum­mit is the meet­ing of Heads of State and Gov­ern­ment from the Mem­ber Coun­tries of the Gas Ex­port­ing Coun­tries Fo­rum.

It serves as a plat­form for lead­ers to en­gage in con­struc­tive di­a­logue and share their in­sights on re­cent de­vel­op­ments and fu­ture per­spec­tives re­gard­ing en­er­gy in gen­er­al and nat­ur­al gas in par­tic­u­lar. The sum­mit is an­tic­i­pat­ed to cul­mi­nate in the is­suance of the Al­giers De­c­la­ra­tion.