Trinidad and To­ba­go is in an in­trigu­ing po­si­tion with re­gard to glob­al en­er­gy, and a son of the soil is hop­ing to see the coun­try achieve its po­ten­tial.

At the start of Oc­to­ber, Brent Sinanan be­came the glob­al en­er­gy ad­vis­er at the World Bank.

It was a bit of a de­par­ture from the path he had trav­elled for close to 30 years.

Sinanan be­gan his ca­reer in the oil in­dus­try in 1997 af­ter grad­u­at­ing with a mas­ter’s in pe­tro­le­um en­gi­neer­ing from Texas A&M Uni­ver­si­ty.

There­after, he spent 16 years with US oil com­pa­ny Hess, work­ing in var­i­ous re­gions in­clud­ing Asia Pa­cif­ic, Africa, South Amer­i­ca, and the Gulf of Mex­i­co. He had a stint at Span­ish en­er­gy gi­ant Rep­sol be­fore work­ing with Malaysian com­pa­ny Petronas for nine years.

How­ev­er, af­ter sev­er­al years work­ing ex­clu­sive­ly in the oil and gas in­dus­try, a new op­por­tu­ni­ty came his way.

He ex­plained his ex­ten­sive ex­pe­ri­ence in the in­dus­try was seen as an as­set, giv­en the bank’s in­ter­na­tion­al fo­cus on en­er­gy at the mo­ment.

“The World Bank is such a huge or­gan­i­sa­tion with a glob­al reach, and they were look­ing for some­one to head up the en­er­gy di­vi­sion. Not specif­i­cal­ly oil and gas, but all forms of en­er­gy, even re­new­ables as well. So they looked at my pro­file, and they de­cid­ed with my glob­al ex­pe­ri­ence, es­pe­cial­ly work­ing in de­vel­op­ing coun­tries, this would be a good fit for me,” Sinanan said, “I thought it would be a good chance to el­e­vate my ca­reer by mov­ing out of pure oil and gas and work in a bank, which en­com­pass­es en­gi­neer­ing, busi­ness, fi­nance, eco­nom­ics and will give me a sort of broad glob­al ex­po­sure as well.”

Sinanan said the World Bank is par­tic­u­lar­ly in­ter­est­ed in the in­creased de­vel­op­ment of re­new­able en­er­gy sources, as they see it as a ma­jor cat­a­lyst to strength­en­ing de­vel­op­ing economies.

“Re­new­ables are sort of the emerg­ing en­er­gy field. It is con­tribut­ing around 20 per cent of the world’s pow­er gen­er­a­tion to­day, and even more in cer­tain coun­tries. So that’s the push, and what they find is that re­new­ables help, es­pe­cial­ly in de­vel­op­ing coun­tries, es­pe­cial­ly places like Africa, Asia, where cer­tain coun­tries do not have fos­sil fu­el re­sources. So en­er­gy like so­lar and wind and even things like ge­ot­her­mal and hy­dro­elec­tric will play a role in build­ing up these coun­tries and help­ing their economies to grow.”

He ex­plained the bank has sig­nif­i­cant in­ter­est in this coun­try as well as its Cari­com coun­ter­parts Guyana and Suri­name.

Sinanan said there were plans for a World Bank team to vis­it T&T soon, with dis­cus­sions set to be held with the Min­is­ter of En­er­gy, with plans to even es­tab­lish an of­fice here.

“We’ll be mak­ing trips to Trinidad, Guyana and Suri­name some­time next year to sort of kick things off. So that’s my fo­cus right now, to build ex­per­tise, and ac­cess to loans, etc, in that re­gion,” he said, “I think it’s very pos­i­tive just for the mere fact that they want to open an of­fice in Trinidad, be­cause Trinidad is one of the few places where they do not have an es­tab­lished coun­try of­fice.”

The in­ter­est is not tied to the oil and gas sec­tors in the coun­try, but the po­ten­tial to push the re­new­able tran­si­tion as well.

“They are par­tic­u­lar­ly in­ter­est­ed in Trinidad, Guyana and Suri­name, be­cause they ac­knowl­edge that while the in­dus­try is there and it’s es­tab­lished and do­ing quite well, there’s tremen­dous growth in terms of wind and so­lar.

“Those are the two fo­cus­es that the World Bank sees for a place like Trinidad. And one of the rea­sons is that they’re say­ing that why not re­duce emis­sions? Be­cause Trinidad has one of the high­est emis­sions. It’s one of the places where emis­sions oc­cur be­cause of the large petro­chem­i­cal in­dus­try, etc. So what they’re hop­ing is that, in ad­di­tion to help­ing to re­duce emis­sions over time, we use re­new­ables more be­cause it’s al­ready avail­able. We just have to har­ness it,” he said, “This will al­so al­low Trinidad to ex­port more, rather than have to con­sume so much of the gas, do­mes­tic pow­er, and use re­new­ables in­stead. And it’s al­so clean­er”?

He ex­plained the bank’s cur­rent fo­cus is on tran­si­tion­ing from fos­sil fu­els to re­new­able en­er­gy, us­ing nat­ur­al gas as a bridge and it is cur­rent­ly work­ing on projects in var­i­ous re­gions, in­clud­ing Brazil, Mex­i­co, Nige­ria, An­go­la and Uzbek­istan.

How­ev­er, Sinanan ex­plained, de­spite these moves, glob­al­ly there has not been a re­duc­tion in emis­sions as un­der­lined at the re­cent­ly con­clud­ed COP30 (Con­fer­ence of the Par­ties).

“What COP has shown is that we’re not work­ing hard enough and we’re not be­ing ef­fec­tive enough, be­cause emis­sions has ac­tu­al­ly gone up from 2023, to 2025,” he ex­plained.

“That’s con­cern­ing be­cause there’s a lot of mon­ey that’s be­ing in­vest­ed by the World Bank and oth­er mul­ti­lat­er­al agen­cies, like the Chi­na Bank for Re­con­struc­tion, Eu­ro­pean banks, etc. So there’s a lot more work to be done.”

He said giv­en the im­pact T&T, Guyana and Suri­name have on the glob­al en­er­gy mar­ket, they could be­come a bea­con of change in that re­gard, par­tic­u­lar­ly as the im­pact of cli­mate change has re­cent­ly been shown with dev­as­tat­ing ef­fect in the re­gion.

“They ac­knowl­edge that cli­mate change is re­al. There are parts of the fi­nan­cial in­dus­try that don’t ac­knowl­edge it as yet, but they are very on board with the fact that cli­mate change is re­al. It’s go­ing to have a dan­ger­ous ef­fect. And they are very strong on de­car­bon­i­sa­tion. Every­thing that they in­vest in has to have a de­car­bon­i­sa­tion el­e­ment, es­pe­cial­ly in the oil and gas in­dus­try and re­new­ables, etc,” he said, ac­knowl­edg­ing that Hur­ri­cane Melis­sa’s im­pact could not be un­der­stat­ed at this time.

“Com­ing to Ja­maica and the wider Caribbean, which is not seen as a heavy in­dus­tri­alised area, with the ex­cep­tion of places like Trinidad, etc. But we are the vic­tims of cli­mate change as a source that is cre­at­ed in oth­er parts of the world.

“The vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty that we have in the Caribbean. They ac­knowl­edge that, and they are al­ways will­ing to help. And they know that there are very few fos­sil fu­el re­source rich coun­tries in the Caribbean. Just Trinidad, Guyana, Suri­name, so that’s why they’re putting up huge ef­fort to work with re­new­ables,” Sinanan said.

He said the point is not on­ly to help those coun­tries re­duce im­por­ta­tion costs, be­cause they have to spend a lot of for­eign ex­change to buy oil and gas, but al­so to use the re­sources at their dis­pos­al such as wind, so­lar and ge­ot­her­mal to help build the coun­tries by re­duc­ing the im­port bills and costs that these coun­tries have to weath­er in or­der to grow.”

T&T has start­ed some in­vest­ment in re­new­able en­er­gy in the past decade. On Ju­ly 17, the first elec­trons were trans­mit­ted from the south­ern seg­ment of the Brechin Cas­tle so­lar farm. That farm is joint project be­tween Shell, bpTT and NGC which was green­light­ed by the gov­ern­ment in De­cem­ber 2022.

Ear­li­er in 2022, con­struc­tion of the Pi­ar­co so­lar park be­gan. It was com­mis­sioned in 2024. The park was al­so fea­tured in a gov­ern­ment part­ner­ship, this time with the Eu­ro­pean Union.