Col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the gov­ern­ment and en­er­gy sec­tor stake­hold­ers must be sus­tained to en­sure this coun­try gets the best val­ue for mon­ey go­ing for­ward.

These were among some of the key points dis­cussed dur­ing the clos­ing ses­sion of the T&T En­er­gy Con­fer­ence ti­tled, Nav­i­gat­ing a Com­plex En­er­gy Fu­ture in which var­ied re­flec­tions of the three-day event were brought to the fore.

Shaun Ram­per­sad, chief op­er­at­ing of­fi­cer, Ramps Lo­gis­tics, who was among the pan­el em­pha­sised the im­por­tance of en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty, say­ing that every mol­e­cule of hy­dro­gen which sits in the ground re­mains a di­min­ish­ing as­set for this coun­try.

“The im­por­tance of col­lab­o­ra­tion; us in the pri­vate sec­tor the Gov­ern­ment, the up­stream­ers, the down­stream­ers, the mid­stream­ers... how do we work to­geth­er to en­sure that cap­i­tal gets to the best projects and how do we en­sure that our best prospects in this coun­try whether they lie with­in Trinidad or on the Venezue­lan bor­der, how do we pro­duce these prospects as quick­ly as pos­si­ble,” Ram­per­sad ex­plained, em­pha­sis­ing that the longer the mol­e­cules re­mains undis­cov­ered the less val­ue T&T will re­ceive from it.

Ac­cord­ing to Ram­per­sad this coun­try must pro­duce as much as it can, as quick­ly as it can and then in­vest those rev­enues in the in­dus­try for the fu­ture.

“We spoke a lot about hy­dro­gen and I think that’s the start of the next in­dus­try,” Ram­per­sad added.

An­oth­er key as­pect, ac­cord­ing to T&T En­er­gy Cham­ber Chair­man Jerome Dook­ie, is the short­fall in gas sup­ply which con­tin­ues to be a chal­lenge for the sec­tor.

Dr Joseph Ish­mael Khan, chair­man of The Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny of T&T Ltd, who echoed sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments not­ed that T&T is in a state of en­er­gy tran­si­tion and with­in that there is val­ue cre­ation and val­ue sus­tain­abil­i­ty, and there­fore, a need to look at pol­i­cy re­form.

“At the lev­el of mon­e­tary re­form, tax re­form, fis­cal in­cen­tive,” Khan ex­plained, adding that an­oth­er big take­away from the con­fer­ence was the use of tech­nol­o­gy as an en­abler as T&T moves in­to this pe­ri­od.

This year’s con­fer­ence record­ed 700-plus at­ten­dees, cov­er­ing a vast range of par­tic­i­pants across the in­dus­try al­so in­clud­ing those re­gion­al­ly.

In this light, so­cial in­ter­ac­tion and link­ages are im­por­tant, said Gre­goire de Cour­celles, gen­er­al man­ag­er, Peren­co T&T.

“And it’s how we make things progress through these so­cial in­ter­ac­tions,” de Cour­celles ex­plained.

Over the last cou­ple of years COVID forced the con­fer­ence to be held vir­tu­al­ly. The role of en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty was al­so un­der­scored dur­ing the event.

Surg­ing tem­per­a­tures in North Amer­i­ca and Eu­rope along­side geopo­lit­i­cal pres­sures in­clud­ing the on­go­ing war in Ukraine con­tin­ue to fo­cus on the need for en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty.

Hence Khan said it’s not on­ly im­por­tant to man­age geopol­i­tics strate­gi­cal­ly but al­so to do so with sen­si­tiv­i­ty.

Ear­li­er this week the Unit­ed States Gov­ern­ment grant­ed a li­cence al­low­ing T&T to de­vel­op the Drag­on Gas Field in Venezue­lan ter­ri­to­r­i­al wa­ters.

The deal, which in­volved the de­vel­op­ment of cross-bor­der gas from Venezuela’s Drag­on Gas Field, was signed in Au­gust 2018.

It was shelved af­ter the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion im­posed sanc­tions on Venezuela’s PDVSA.

Like oth­er en­ti­ties de Cour­celles de­scribed the waiv­er of the sanc­tion as a very key mile­stone for T&T, how­ev­er, he al­so not­ed that this will take time to de­liv­er.

“We are not talk­ing about two or three years. It’s prob­a­bly in the range of ten years. It could be a bit ear­li­er but in any case it shouldn’t slow down the pace of de­liv­er­ing projects in T&T,” Peren­co’s GM ad­vised.

He fur­ther rec­om­mend­ed that this should nei­ther stymie the pace at which projects are ap­proved nor the rate of dis­cov­er­ing new re­sources.

“Be­cause it re­al­ly hap­pens now,” de Cour­celles said adding, “It’s now that the win­dow of avail­able ca­pac­i­ty is present when Venezue­lan gas is com­ing in­to the sys­tem...it’s re­al­ly now that we should de­liv­er projects and work on projects.”

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, he said for Peren­co as a main­stream pro­duc­er and for the ser­vices in­dus­try, the Drag­on deal is ex­cel­lent as it al­so gives a vi­sion, which is not al­ways avail­able.

“It is some­thing which from time to time, is lack­ing a bit ...and which made a few com­pa­nies leave the coun­try. It’s very im­por­tant for us, up­stream pro­duc­ers, to have this lev­el of ex­cel­lence with­in the ser­vice com­pa­nies and the va­ri­ety of ser­vices pro­vid­ed,” de Cour­celles said.

He added that com­pe­ti­tion al­so brings that lev­el of qual­i­ty to the very top of or­gan­i­sa­tions.

“It’s ab­solute­ly es­sen­tial if you want to prop­er­ly de­liv­er our project; prop­er­ly, safe­ly and with­in the cost so this de­ci­sion and this news will some­how im­pact that in the com­ing two, three, four years.

“This is what will im­pact our ac­tiv­i­ty as an up­stream pro­duc­er in T&T for the next years,” de Cour­celles added.

In high­light­ing the work of the T&T En­er­gy Cham­ber in speed­ing up that process for stake­hold­ers, Dook­ie main­tained that talks re­main key.

“What we have been do­ing is we have the con­ver­sa­tions with the dif­fer­ent min­istries, state agen­cies and reg­u­la­to­ry bod­ies among oth­ers...there has to be a co­or­di­nat­ed ap­proach to cer­tain things and where we iden­ti­fy the need for sev­er­al ap­provals to move a project for­ward where as tra­di­tion­al­ly, things would have been done se­quen­tial­ly,” Dook­ie al­so the Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor of Methanol Hold­ings (Trinidad) Ltd, Caribbean Ni­tro­gen Com­pa­ny Ltd and Ni­tro­gen (2000) Un­lim­it­ed, mem­bers of the Pro­man fam­i­ly of com­pa­nies said.

Ac­cord­ing to Dook­ie, get­ting from a con­cept to an idea or a first sense that there’s gas-through tech­nol­o­gy- and bring­ing it to pro­duc­tion; it makes a huge dif­fer­ence if one or two years can be cut off of that project.
“With­in our own bor­ders there’s gas we can bring to mar­ket a lot faster through the ap­provals process,” Dook­ie said, em­pha­sis­ing that the Cham­ber will con­tin­ue to ad­vo­cate and en­cour­age dis­cus­sions, iden­ti­fy ar­eas which can be ap­proved and con­tin­ue to build on suc­cess­es while al­so ex­am­in­ing lessons to be learnt.

He al­so ref­er­enced the time it took to bring the Light­source BP project to sign­ing.

In De­cem­ber 2022, a Pow­er Pur­chase Agree­ment (PPA) be­tween the T&T Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) and the con­sor­tium part­ners for the coun­try’s first util­i­ty-scale so­lar pho­to­volta­ic (PV) project was signed.

T&TEC and a con­sor­tium com­pris­ing bpTT, Shell T&T and Light­source BP signed the agree­ment to de­vel­op two so­lar pow­er plants at Brechin Cas­tle and Or­ange Grove, pro­vid­ing 112 megawatts (MW) of pow­er.

The project is lo­cat­ed across two sites, Brechin Cas­tle (92MW), and Or­ange Grove (20MW) and con­struc­tion is set to com­mence on both sites in the first quar­ter of 2023, and is ex­pect­ed to be op­er­a­tional in the third quar­ter and fourth quar­ter of 2024.