Gail Alexan­der

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley yes­ter­day de­scribed the sign­ing in ear­ly De­cem­ber of the agree­ments to re­struc­ture the share­hold­ing in At­lantic LNG as one of the most sig­nif­i­cant de­ci­sions that the Gov­ern­ment has been able to ac­com­plish.

And he told the post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence yes­ter­day at White­hall in Port-of-Spain that the re­struc­tur­ing of the share­hold­ing in the four-train LNG fa­cil­i­ty in Point Fortin in ad­di­tion to the new and im­proved for­mu­la for re­al­is­ing net back LNG rev­enues “is what is sav­ing us right now.”

Row­ley said, “With­out those two de­ci­sions, the fu­ture of T&T would have been quite bleak.

“If I say so my­self, if I have done noth­ing for this coun­try to take us to this po­si­tion, I am sat­is­fied that my liv­ing has not been in vain.”

At the news con­fer­ence, Row­ley out­lined his busy trav­el sched­ule be­tween mid-No­vem­ber and De­cem­ber 7, when he is sched­uled to at­tend sum­mits and oth­er events in Sau­di Ara­bia, Dubai and Lon­don.

The Prime Min­is­ter trav­els first to Sau­di Ara­bia to par­tic­i­pate in the Cari­com/Sau­di Ara­bia sum­mit on No­vem­ber 16. Row­ley said Sau­di Ara­bia has a huge in­vest­ment fund through which it does ma­jor in­vest­ments glob­al­ly. He said one of the things Cari­com is al­ways short of is an in­flow of for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment and Sau­di Ara­bia has been in­ter­est­ed in Cari­com re­cent­ly. He will stay on in Sau­di Ara­bia for sev­er­al days af­ter the sum­mit to hold bi­lat­er­al ne­go­ti­a­tions.

The Prime Min­is­ter al­so in­tends to at­tend the Unit­ed Na­tions Cli­mate Change Sum­mit, called COP 28, in Dubai, which takes place be­tween No­vem­ber 30 and De­cem­ber 12. The Prime Min­is­ter said he will be at COP 28 for the high lev­el dis­cus­sion for about three days.

Row­ley will then go to Lon­don be­tween De­cem­ber 4 to 6 to sign the agree­ments that will for­malise the re­struc­tur­ing of At­lantic LNG–dis­cus­sions and ne­go­ti­a­tions that have been un­der­tak­en with multi­na­tion­al en­er­gy com­pa­nies, BP and Shell, over the last two-and-half years.

“The re­struc­tur­ing of At­lantic LNG is one of the most sig­nif­i­cant things this Gov­ern­ment would have done. It was not easy, but I think we were able to con­vince the prin­ci­pals that Trinidad and To­ba­go’s in­ter­est has to come first.”

Row­ley said as a re­sult of the work done on Train 1, Gov­ern­ment was able to change the share­hold­ing and re­struc­ture the LNG busi­ness in T&T. He lament­ed that many peo­ple in this coun­try did not pay enough at­ten­tion to those dis­cus­sions and de­ci­sions, which he de­scribed as far reach­ing.

“With­out the re­struc­tur­ing of At­lantic LNG, our earn­ing ca­pac­i­ty would have been sig­nif­i­cant­ly ham­pered and de­grad­ed go­ing for­ward,” Row­ley said, ex­plain­ing that when all four LNG trains were in op­er­a­tion, the Gov­ern­ment’s share­hold­ing in Train I was 10 per cent and 11.11 per cent in Train IV. T&T had no share­hold­ing in Trains II and III, he point­ed out. The two largest up­stream nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­er in T&T, BP and Shell, have share­hold­ings in all four trains.

He said when the avail­abil­i­ty of nat­ur­al gas be­came a prob­lem, the oth­er own­ers of Train I de­cid­ed it had to be with­drawn as there was not enough gas to run four trains.

“But, of course, if you were not run­ning four trains and they had all of the share­hold­ing in Trains II and III, you know what that meant for us...

“What we did was to en­sure that we kept Train I on the ta­ble, so that we would have a seat at the ta­ble and ne­go­ti­ate. And rather than ne­go­ti­ate a fu­ner­al, we ne­go­ti­at­ed for a chris­ten­ing.

“As a re­sult of what we did with Train I, we were able to change the share­hold­ing in the re­struc­tured LNG busi­ness in Trinidad and To­ba­go, where the Gov­ern­ment of T&T will now have a share­hold­ing of 10 per cent in the en­tire busi­ness...”