Dr Bhoen­dra­datt Tewarie is one of T&T’s longest-serv­ing and most dis­tin­guished pub­lic in­tel­lec­tu­als, as he was first elect­ed to the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives in 1986 as a mem­ber of the Na­tion­al Al­liance for Re­con­struc­tion gov­ern­ment.

When the NAR lost pow­er in 1991, he was em­ployed as a lec­tur­er at the St Au­gus­tine cam­pus of The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, and he served as ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of the UWI In­sti­tute of Busi­ness (IOB) for nine years be­fore be­ing ap­point­ed pro vice-chan­cel­lor and prin­ci­pal of the St. Au­gus­tine cam­pus in Sep­tem­ber 2001.

Dr Tewarie re­turned to front-line pol­i­tics in May 2011, when he was ap­point­ed a sen­a­tor and min­is­ter of plan­ning, eco­nom­ic and so­cial re­struc­tur­ing and gen­der af­fairs in Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s first ad­min­is­tra­tion. He was elect­ed to the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives in 2015 as the Mem­ber for Ca­roni Cen­tral in the 11th Par­lia­ment.

He has served on many pub­lic sec­tor boards, both lo­cal­ly and re­gion­al­ly, as well as on the boards of lo­cal pri­vate sec­tor com­pa­nies. He has pub­lished many ar­ti­cles and book chap­ters on eco­nom­ic, ed­u­ca­tion­al, and de­vel­op­men­tal is­sues, ac­cord­ing to the T&T Par­lia­ment web­site. He re­ceived his PhD in com­par­a­tive lit­er­a­ture from Penn­syl­va­nia State Uni­ver­si­ty, and he is, of course, a T&T Guardian colum­nist.

Giv­en his pedi­gree, one as­sumes that his is an in­flu­en­tial voice in the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC).

In his com­men­tary in the T&T Guardian of April 30, 2026, Dr Tewarie re­flect­ed on the first an­niver­sary of the gen­er­al elec­tion vic­to­ry of the UNC, ob­serv­ing that the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion still has four months of ex­e­cu­tion on the 2026 bud­get, and then a new bud­get in Sep­tem­ber 2026 to get the coun­try through 2027.

He then wrote, “If things work out well, we may have more nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion by then. If things hap­pen at a slow­er pace, an­oth­er bud­get for the 2028 fis­cal year will have to be pre­sent­ed in Sep­tem­ber 2027 with new nat­ur­al gas still to flow.

“So, how are we go­ing to pre­pare our econ­o­my for the 2028 wind­fall? What are we go­ing to do in the two in­ter­ven­ing years that will al­low us to re­al­ly lever­age the com­ing wind­fall in a mean­ing­ful way? Be­cause we have been through a cy­cle of booms and busts be­fore, and af­ter each bust, we end up back to square one.

“Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar is in a po­si­tion to break that cy­cle of en­er­gy de­pen­den­cy. But on­ly if she fo­cus­es ded­i­cat­ed­ly on ex­port-ori­ent­ed in­vest­ment in the non-en­er­gy sec­tor; on AI tech­nol­o­gy-dri­ven re­forms that save mon­ey, in­crease ef­fi­cien­cy, boost pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, and spawn busi­ness­es be­fore new en­er­gy wind­fall rev­enue be­gins to flow. If we fail to do this now, the en­er­gy rev­enue will be de­plet­ed as fast as it flows in.”

There are sev­er­al im­por­tant things in that ex­tract to which the wider T&T pub­lic needs to pay care­ful, even foren­sic at­ten­tion:

• Is Dr Tewarie cor­rect in his as­sump­tion that T&T is go­ing to ex­pe­ri­ence a nat­ur­al gas-led wind­fall in fis­cal 2028, that is the pe­ri­od from Oc­to­ber 1, 2027 to Sep­tem­ber 30, 2028?

As it per­tains to coun­tries, a wind­fall is most of­ten de­fined as “a typ­i­cal­ly un­ex­pect­ed or sud­den in­crease in rev­enue, of­ten stem­ming from nat­ur­al re­source booms, abrupt shifts in terms of trade or large, un­ex­pect­ed fi­nan­cial in­flows.” That de­f­i­n­i­tion sug­gests that a wind­fall is gen­er­al­ly un­ex­pect­ed, which tells me that if the in­crease in rev­enue is ex­pect­ed, it may not be clas­si­fied as a wind­fall.

In my view, the in­crease in rev­enue that T&T ex­pe­ri­enced in 2022, fol­low­ing Rus­sia’s Feb­ru­ary in­va­sion of Ukraine, was a wind­fall be­cause of its al­most im­me­di­ate im­pact on the price of oil, liqui­fied nat­ur­al gas (LNG) and the petro­chem­i­cals that the coun­try pro­duces.

The for­mer min­is­ter of fi­nance, Colm Im­bert ex­pect­ed to re­ceive a to­tal of $43.33 bil­lion in rev­enue, with “oil” rev­enue con­tribut­ing $12.61 bil­lion. The 2022 bud­get was pred­i­cat­ed on an oil price of US$65 a bar­rel and a nat­ur­al gas net­back price of US$3.75. A fis­cal deficit of $9.09 bil­lion was ex­pect­ed.

As it turns out, T&T’s to­tal rev­enue in the 2022 fis­cal year was $54.60 bil­lion, of which “en­er­gy-sec­tor rev­enue” con­tributed $30.37 bil­lion, lead­ing to a fis­cal sur­plus of $1.33 bil­lion, the first in about a decade and a half.

I would ar­gue, there­fore, that T&T ex­pe­ri­enced a true wind­fall in Feb­ru­ary 2022, as the Ukraine war was un­ex­pect­ed and the 26 per cent rev­enue boost was sub­stan­tial.

If we use the de­f­i­n­i­tion above, what Dr Tewarie refers to as the “2028 wind­fall” is not a wind­fall at all be­cause it would not be an “un­ex­pect­ed or sud­den in­crease in rev­enue.” If there is to be an in­crease in rev­enue in 2028, it would be ex­pect­ed and planned. Words, and their de­f­i­n­i­tions, mat­ter, don’t they?

• Is Dr Tewarie cor­rect in his as­sump­tion that T&T should ex­pect “new en­er­gy wind­fall rev­enue” to be­gin to flow in 2028, as a re­sult of an in­crease in the amount of nat­ur­al gas avail­able to the na­tion­al, nat­ur­al gas pipeline grid owned by whol­ly state-owned Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny of T&T (NGC)?

In my view, Dr Tewarie’s as­sump­tion about an in­crease in nat­ur­al gas to NGC in 2028 is cer­tain­ly pos­si­ble, but it is ab­solute­ly NOT a sure thing.

That is be­cause his as­sump­tion is most like­ly based on new nat­ur­al gas flows from the Drag­on near-bor­der gas field, the Lo­ran and Cocuina-Man­akin cross-bor­der fields, and the Ca­lyp­so field.

It is use­ful to note that the Venezue­lan ad­min­is­tra­tion, head­ed by Vice Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­driguez, has held nat­ur­al gas talks with both Shell (on Drag­on) and BP (on Cocuina-Man­akin and Lo­ran) and both en­er­gy ma­jors have re­ceived pre­lim­i­nary OFAC (Of­fice of For­eign As­sets Con­trol) li­cences.

As Op­po­si­tion MP, Stu­art Young, has point­ed out on a num­ber of oc­ca­sions, Port-of-Spain has not been in­clud­ed in any en­er­gy talks with Cara­cas, and T&T’s plan to en­gage in such talks has not re­ceived a pos­i­tive out­come up to now.

But what of NGC chair­man, Ger­ald Ramdeen’s May 1, 2026 com­ments that “the on­ly place that gas can be mon­e­tised is in the in­fra­struc­ture that is avail­able in T&T?”

Mr Ramdeen must know that that state­ment is sim­ply not true.

He must have been made aware, in his time as the NGC chair, of FLNG (as in float­ing LNG) fa­cil­i­ties, which make it pos­si­ble for en­er­gy com­pa­nies to pro­duce, liq­ue­fy, and store nat­ur­al gas off­shore, with the LNG then trans­ferred di­rect­ly from the float­ing fa­cil­i­ty to spe­cialised car­ri­ers for trans­port to cus­tomers world­wide.

Mr Ramdeen must know, in par­tic­u­lar, of Shell’s Pre­lude FLNG fa­cil­i­ty, which be­gan pro­duc­tion in De­cem­ber 2018 and of­floaded its first LNG car­go in June 2019, ac­cord­ing to the com­pa­ny’s web­site.

I can imag­ine up­roar­i­ous laugh­ter that must have bro­ken out in Shell’s ex­ec­u­tive of­fices when they read Mr Ramdeen’s com­ments about NGC be­ing the on­ly game in town.

It may cer­tain­ly be more cost-ef­fec­tive for Shell, for ex­am­ple, to con­nect Drag­on gas to NGC’s 24-inch pipeline through its Hi­bi­cus plat­form in the North Coast Ma­rine Area. If that is the case, Shell will cer­tain­ly have to ne­go­ti­ate with NGC from the field.

Al­so, the De­cem­ber 2023 Drag­on gas agree­ment that Venezuela signed with Shell and NGC in­di­cates that 70 per cent of the Drag­on nat­ur­al gas should be liq­ue­fied at the Point Fortin LNG fa­cil­i­ty and 30 per cent go to the petro­chem­i­cal op­er­a­tors on the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate and at La Brea. If Drag­on starts pro­duc­tion at 350 mil­lion cu­bic feet per day (mm­cfd), that means 245 mm­cfd goes to At­lantic LNG and 105 mm­cfd goes to petro­chem­i­cals. Where does that leave the op­er­a­tors at Point Lisas and La Brea?

The agree­ment al­so guar­an­tees the South Amer­i­can coun­try no less than 45 per cent of the gross rev­enue from the Drag­on project.

If Venezuela gets 45 per cent and Shell gets 45 per cent, where does that leave NGC in terms of the gross rev­enues from Drag­on, if Amer­i­can in­ter­ests have to be served?

Will Shell in­sist that NGC re­ceive a flat toll for trans­port­ing the nat­ur­al gas through its grid?

All of those are very dif­fi­cult is­sues that may or may not be con­clud­ed in time for nat­ur­al gas to flow to T&T by the fis­cal year start­ing on Oc­to­ber 1, 2027, about 16 and a half months from now.