Oil and gas are the lifeblood of this coun­try’s econ­o­my, which is borne out by the fact that the an­nu­al bud­get is pegged on these re­spec­tive prices.

In the 2023 bud­get, the Gov­ern­ment based its rev­enue as­sump­tions on oil and nat­ur­al gas prices of US$92.50 per bar­rel and US$6 per mmb­tu.

How­ev­er, he sec­tor has had its fair share of chal­lenges in re­cent years.

With the na­tion­al fis­cal pack­age to be un­veiled at the start of next week, the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian sought the com­ments from for­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine and lead­ing en­er­gy ex­pert An­tho­ny “Tony” Paul.

Ac­cord­ing to Ram­nar­ine, oil pro­duc­tion con­tin­ues its “death march” and he called on the Gov­ern­ment to speed­i­ly im­ple­ment stronger in­cen­tives to re­verse this.

“Three things need to hap­pen to in­crease in­vest­ment in en­er­gy. One is that the Gov­ern­ment needs to be award­ing more acreage. We are go­ing to be of­fi­cial­ly award­ing some deep­wa­ter blocks next week, but those will be the first deep­wa­ter blocks award­ed by this coun­try since 2014. We would have award­ed three deep­wa­ter blocks in nine years and that sim­ply does not cut it.

“Sec­ond­ly, the fis­cal regime around the en­er­gy sec­tor does not ex­cite in­vestors so we need to look at the bar­ri­ers to in­vest­ment,” Ram­nar­ine ex­plained.

He al­so rec­om­mend­ed that Gov­ern­ment ex­am­ine the “whole ease of do­ing busi­ness” in the en­er­gy sec­tor as reg­u­la­to­ry ap­provals take too long.

“I have no prob­lem with reg­u­la­tion, but the Gov­ern­ment agen­cies need to move faster with how they grant ap­provals,” Ram­nar­ine em­pha­sised.

Re­gard­ing the Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery, he said it seems the Gov­ern­ment cur­rent­ly has no plans for the en­ti­ty.

“It is ba­si­cal­ly wast­ing away and turn­ing in­to scrap met­al,” he said, adding, “We can­not al­low a valu­able as­set to be wast­ed as we spent US$1.7 bil­lion to up­grade that re­fin­ery be­tween 2006 and 2014.”

Ac­cord­ing to Ram­nar­ine, there are plants in the re­fin­ery that are al­most “brand new.”

Ram­nar­ine is al­so call­ing for more trans­paren­cy on last Wednes­day’s sign­ing of the Drag­on deal be­tween this Gov­ern­ment and the Venezue­lan ad­min­is­tra­tion.

“This is the third Drag­on deal that has been signed since 2016. We need to know what com­mit­ments were made on be­half of the peo­ple of T&T and how soon we can ex­pect gas to ar­rive from Drag­on,” he said.

Fu­el prices is an­oth­er is­sue which needs to be ad­dressed.

The for­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter ad­vised that cur­rent En­er­gy Min­is­ter, Stu­art Young, needs to give the pop­u­la­tion a “clear in­di­ca­tion” as to how he plans to man­age the sub­sidy in the next 12 months, con­sid­er­ing that oil prices have now re­bound­ed to about US$90 a bar­rel.

Ram­nar­ine is al­so call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to make some de­fin­i­tive state­ments in the up­com­ing bud­get on wind en­er­gy and hy­dro­gen.

“That’s part of our fu­ture and we need to start plan­ning and im­ple­ment­ing for those things,” he added.

Mean­while Paul, who has been a lead­ing ex­pert in the sec­tor for 40 plus years, al­so ad­vised that a new vi­sion and strat­e­gy is re­quired for T&T’s en­er­gy sec­tor which should be aligned to the coun­try’s re­al­i­ties and “a deep un­der­stand­ing of the pos­si­bil­i­ties and as­pi­ra­tions as a peo­ple.”.

Not­ing that the en­er­gy sec­tor is a “com­plex in­dus­try,” Paul said in the past, sec­tor lead­ers have made sig­nif­i­cant de­ci­sions with “se­vere con­se­quences and no ac­count­abil­i­ty for their ac­tions.

“Of­ten these were made in iso­la­tion, based on their un­der­stand­ing of one or more as­pects of the in­dus­try, but blind to the fol­low-on ef­fects of those de­ci­sions.

“Even the best ex­perts know that they do not have a full ap­pre­ci­a­tion of all the in­ter-re­lat­ed com­po­nents of the oil and gas busi­ness, so col­lab­o­rate with oth­er ex­perts in sys­tems that en­sure any risks are un­der­stood and mit­i­gat­ed and that those re­spon­si­ble for de­ci­sions or ac­tions can be held to ac­count,” Paul ex­plained.

He em­pha­sised that there must be that com­mit­ment in putting the in­ter­ests of the peo­ple of T&T first, in­clud­ing fu­ture gen­er­a­tions with sen­si­ble and en­force­able poli­cies across the val­ue and de­ci­sion chains.

Fur­ther, Paul said there must al­so be reg­u­la­to­ry over­haul which in­clude in­sti­tu­tions tak­ing in­to ac­count ad­min­is­tra­tion, peo­ple, process as well as look­ing at the reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work en­com­pass­ing laws, reg­u­la­tions, con­tracts, li­cens­es, per­mits, or­ders, etc.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, Paul ad­vised that there must al­so be re­spect for and ad­her­ence to laws and reg­u­la­tions as well as knowl­edge­able and trust­ed civ­il so­ci­ety watch­dogs.

Paul who has had var­i­ous roles in­clud­ing with­in the Gov­ern­ment, State and pri­vate sec­tors (in­clud­ing with multi­na­tion­als) not­ed that T&T has a great deal of re­main­ing oil, in­clud­ing on­shore in un­der-ex­plored ar­eas and in the Gulf-of-Paria

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, he said there is much re­main­ing nat­ur­al gas, in­clud­ing in small­er fields un­der li­cence to in­ter­na­tion­al op­er­a­tors, who have no in­ter­est in de­vel­op­ing these small fields.

Paul al­so de­tailed that there are a lot of idle or un­der­utilised high val­ue as­sets, in­clud­ing stor­age tanks for crude and re­fined prod­uct with sup­port­ing ports and ter­mi­nals as well as pro­cess­ing plants and pipelines.

Ac­cord­ing to Paul, with the right lead­er­ship, peo­ple and strate­gies, T&T can pave a bet­ter way for­ward for its en­er­gy fu­ture as this will achieve in­creased in­vest­ments, in­creased ac­tiv­i­ties, in­creased in-coun­try val­ue re­ten­tion, in­creased pro­duc­tion and an in­crease in job cre­ation in the sec­tor.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, Paul said this will al­so re­sult in the ex­port of oil­field skills, goods and ser­vices, en­hance T&T’s in­dus­tri­al­i­sa­tion, in­crease the ex­port of goods and ser­vices and lever­age the coun­try’s oil and gas sec­tor for eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion.

In fur­ther pre­sent­ing a snap­shot of the state of T&T’s sec­tor, Paul not­ed there is not on­ly de­clin­ing in­vest­ment in T&T’s en­er­gy sec­tor, but there ought to more jobs par­tic­u­lar­ly in Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy, En­gi­neer­ing and Maths (STEM).

“The is­sues fac­ing the sec­tor are sys­temic and not new,” said the in­de­pen­dent con­sul­tant.

Since 2004, suc­ces­sive min­is­ters of fi­nance have out­lined the in­ten­tion to re­con­sti­tute the Per­ma­nent Pe­tro­le­um Pric­ing Com­mit­tee of the Min­istry of Fi­nance. This is the body, cre­at­ed un­der the Pe­tro­le­um Tax­es Act of 1974, to make sure that T&T col­lects its fair share of oil and gas rev­enue by pre­vent­ing tax avoid­ance via trans­fer pric­ing.

“As far as I know it has not func­tioned since and is still not func­tion­ing. You may re­call the “Spot­light on En­er­gy” of March 2018, when the Prime Min­is­ter called the na­tion’s at­ten­tion to the mas­sive scale of tax avoid­ance by the ma­jor multi­na­tion­als op­er­at­ing here. I con­tin­ue to be amazed at the si­lence of civ­il so­ci­ety and the me­dia and the lack of fol­low up.

“The cur­rent state of alarm among cit­i­zens and the me­dia (or parts of it) may be a sense that the wan­ing pros­per­i­ty of the na­tion is not short term or per­haps not even tem­po­rary,” Paul added.