Min­is­ter of En­er­gy Stu­art Young yes­ter­day met with Al­bert Ramdin, Suri­name’s Min­is­ter of For­eign Af­fairs, In­ter­na­tion­al Busi­ness and In­ter­na­tion­al Co­op­er­a­tion in Para­mari­bo to dis­cuss is­sues sur­round­ing re­gion­al en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty.

Young is cur­rent­ly in Suri­name for its en­er­gy, oil and gas sum­mit and ex­hi­bi­tion, 2023 which ends on Wednes­day.

In a news re­lease yes­ter­day, Young said, “We dis­cussed the po­ten­tial of re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion and in par­tic­u­lar the role that we could play along with oth­er Cari­com mem­ber states in pro­vid­ing re­gion­al and ex­tra re­gion­al en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty.

“We are com­mit­ted to work­ing along with Guyana and oth­er re­gion­al hy­dro­car­bon-re­sourced coun­tries to en­sure sus­tain­able en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty for the re­gion.”

Young added that he is look­ing for­ward to par­tic­i­pat­ing with Ramdin and Robert Per­saud, For­eign Sec­re­tary, Min­istry of For­eign Af­fairs and In­ter­na­tion­al Co­op­er­a­tion of Guyana in a min­is­te­r­i­al round­table on “Strate­gic Re­gion­al Co­op­er­a­tion: Chal­lenges and Ben­e­fits” to be held to­day.

In a speech in Mi­a­mi ear­li­er this month, Young ex­plained that the T&T Gov­ern­ment’s ne­go­ti­a­tion with the US ad­min­is­tra­tion to per­suade it to al­low the ex­ploita­tion of the Drag­on field in Venezue­lan wa­ters is an at­tempt to fur­ther re­gion­al en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty.

Young told the Mi­a­mi con­fer­ence that he and Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley spent sig­nif­i­cant time and en­er­gy last year meet­ing with de­ci­sion mak­ers in Wash­ing­ton DC, ne­go­ti­at­ing and ad­vo­cat­ing for the grant of a waiv­er from Of­fice of For­eign As­sets Con­trol (OFAC) for T&T to pro­duce the Drag­on gas field with Shell as our part­ner.

“With the sup­port of oth­er lead­ers of the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (Cari­com), we pur­sued the abil­i­ty to ac­cess this gas field as there is the im­me­di­ate ex­cess ca­pac­i­ty in Trinidad for us to pro­duce ad­di­tion­al LNG, Am­mo­nia and fer­tilis­er prod­ucts and methanol once we can pro­duce the gas field, there­by con­tribut­ing to en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty in the Cari­com and wider re­gion.

“We would be able to pro­vide ad­di­tion­al LNG sup­plies to Cari­com coun­tries and even Eu­rope as it looks for al­ter­na­tives to Russ­ian gas.”

Mean­while, the T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) and ex­porTT are al­so in Suri­name to strength­en trade re­la­tions.

The TTMA said its trade mis­sion is geared to­wards de­ter­min­ing busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ties with­in the Suri­name mar­ket for lo­cal com­pa­nies and es­tab­lish­ing and deep­en­ing strate­gic busi­ness and lo­gis­ti­cal re­la­tion­ships be­tween man­u­fac­tures and buy­ers.

It added this is a key project un­der the Gov­ern­ment’s ex­port boost­er ini­tia­tive, which is key in in­creas­ing the val­ue of all non-en­er­gy ex­ports over the next three years.

The mis­sion com­prised 20 com­pa­nies from the chem­i­cals, print­ing and pack­ag­ing, food and bev­er­age, gar­ments and con­struc­tion sec­tors in­clud­ing Blue Wa­ters, DSB Lid, Lazuri Ap­par­el Ltd, VF Pack­ag­ing Ltd, MIC, Pepe’s Mar­ket­ing and Chris­tle Ltd among oth­ers.