An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers

@guardian.co.tt

In his ex­it in­ter­view on Thurs­day, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley as­sured that this coun­try’s econ­o­my is on sol­id foot­ing. 

How­ev­er, when it comes to its en­er­gy, he said plans are not on­ly fo­cussed on the Drag­on gas deal. 

“We didn’t put all our eggs in one bas­ket. We went and got the uni­ti­sa­tion process can­celled and then through diplo­ma­cy got Venezuela to agree to ex­tract our por­tions from those fields where we share the field with Venezuela and of course, we made arrange­ments that if we do bring gas to mar­ket our earn­ings will change the for­mu­la,” the prime min­is­ter said. 

Com­ment­ing on Row­ley’s com­ments, for­mer En­er­gy Min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine said the prime min­is­ter’s en­er­gy plans may be too lit­tle too late for T&T. 

“A rea­son­able ob­serv­er would agree that the pol­i­cy of se­cur­ing nat­ur­al gas from Venezuela was a cen­tral pil­lar of his ad­min­is­tra­tion’s 2015 to 2025 lega­cy. He cit­ed that his gov­ern­ment was pur­su­ing the de­vel­op­ment of our re­sources with­in our bor­ders, in the shal­low wa­ter and the deep wa­ter, and so on, and that is all fine. But in my re­spect­ful view, it’s too lit­tle too late.” 

Ram­nar­ine said more em­pha­sis should have been placed on de­vel­op­ing this coun­try’s deep­wa­ter re­sources in the last ten years with a clear goal of re­al­is­ing deep­wa­ter nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion by 2025. 

As re­gards to talks with Guyana and Suri­name to se­cure hy­dro­car­bon re­sources, the for­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter said such ini­tia­tives will take years to ma­te­ri­alise and apart from bi-lat­er­al dis­cus­sions and MoUs, he is un­aware of any plan or project premised on lo­gis­tics, en­gi­neer­ing and com­mer­cial­i­ty. 

Mean­while, Am­cham T&T’s chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Ni­rad Tewarie, speak­ing to Guardian me­dia at the cham­ber’s Women in Lead­er­ship Con­fer­ence in Hy­att Re­gency yes­ter­day, said it is im­pos­si­ble to say what would be the out­come, but he re­mains hope­ful that mean­ing­ful talks take place from the gov­ern­ment lev­el. 

“There are some projects with­in our bor­ders, new bid rounds are be­ing opened, there are some dis­cov­er­ies that have been an­nounced but not yet in pro­duc­tion. So if we could find the right mix of poli­cies, in­cen­tives, tax struc­tures that would al­low for gas that we know is there to be brought in­to pro­duc­tion, that would be good.” 

Tewarie said ef­forts need to be con­tin­ued to di­ver­si­fy the econ­o­my, make it eas­i­er to do busi­ness in T&T so that the coun­try can ramp up its rev­enue and em­ploy­ment in oth­er sec­tors be­sides oil and gas.  

Ear­li­er this week the prime min­is­ter hit back at the Op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) and urged the pop­u­la­tion to turn their at­ten­tion on Op­po­si­tion mem­bers who are bent on the down­fall of the Drag­on gas deal with Venezuela. 

“I’m ask­ing you to send your tele­path­ic pow­er to over­come this neg­a­tive non­sense about the fail­ure of the Drag­on deal,” he said while de­liv­er­ing the fea­ture ad­dress at the cer­e­mo­ny for the prac­ti­cal open­ing of the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal Cen­tral Block, again un­der­scor­ing the sig­nif­i­cance of the gas project. 

His com­ment came af­ter Op­po­si­tion shad­ow en­er­gy min­is­ter David Lee called for trans­paren­cy on the deal be­tween the two coun­tries.