PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo has said the gov­ern­ment will ne­go­ti­ate the terms of the cross-bor­der nat­ur­al gas deals in the best in­ter­ests of the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

This was in re­sponse to ques­tions posed to him by Op­po­si­tion MP Stu­art Young con­cern­ing the gov­ern­ment’s fis­cal pol­i­cy on nat­ur­al gas from near-bor­der and cross-bor­der fields, such as the Drag­on Gas field and the Man­akin-Cocuina field.

“We are es­tab­lish­ing a fis­cal frame­work that will en­sure Trinidad and To­ba­go cap­tures val­ue from ex­ter­nal hy­dro­car­bons en­ter­ing this coun­try. Pos­si­ble rev­enue arrange­ments may in­clude fixed fees for the im­por­ta­tion of hy­dro­car­bons, com­mod­i­ty charges based on the vol­ume of gas con­sumed, unit tran­sit fees based on dis­tance, re­served vol­ume or con­sumed vol­ume, and any oth­er mech­a­nism re­quired to pro­tect the na­tion­al in­ter­est while pre­serv­ing project vi­a­bil­i­ty,” said Tan­coo, who al­so stat­ed the ex­ist­ing gov­ern­ment-to-gov­ern­ment arrange­ments with neigh­bour­ing ju­ris­dic­tions did not es­tab­lish spe­cif­ic fis­cal terms for the im­por­ta­tion of hy­dro­car­bons in­to T&T.

“That is a se­ri­ous gap. It means that while the coun­try had arrange­ments, dis­cus­sions and ex­pec­ta­tions, the rev­enue sys­tem and struc­ture was still un­fin­ished,” Tan­coo said in his re­sponse to Young’s ques­tion.

He added, “We are not seek­ing to suf­fo­cate in­vest­ment. We are seek­ing to en­sure that in­vest­ment does not take place at the ex­pense of the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

The Port-of-Spain North/St Ann’s West MP asked if these terms had been dis­cussed with BP and Shell, who are cur­rent­ly in talks with the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment con­cern­ing these fields.

Tan­coo said in re­sponse, “The gov­ern­ment, as I just de­scribed, of this coun­try is in­volved in ne­go­ti­a­tions with sub­stan­tial multi­na­tion­als as it re­lates to this pack­age and as it re­lates to our treat­ment with the oil and gas de­vel­op­ments. Those de­vel­op­ments are in ne­go­ti­a­tion and dis­cus­sion stages.”

Young posed a ques­tion about the pol­i­cy con­cern­ing nat­ur­al gas al­lo­ca­tion from these projects to En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, who al­so stat­ed, “The gov­ern­ment’s pol­i­cy as it re­lates to the al­lo­ca­tion of nat­ur­al gas from cross-bor­der and across-bor­der projects will be to ad­here to the agreed al­lo­ca­tion arrange­ments, which would have formed the part of the ne­go­ti­at­ed com­mer­cial arrange­ments pri­or.”