Shas­tri Boodan

Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce (CCIC) head Bal­dath Ma­haraj has called on the Gov­ern­ment to move quick­ly to en­sure a con­tract is in place to get gas from Venezuela’s Drag­on Field, giv­en that there could be com­pli­ca­tions be­cause of the po­lit­i­cal insta­bil­i­ty in Venezuela.

On Tues­day, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley an­nounced that the Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment had ap­proved T&T’s de­vel­op­ment of the Drag­on Field via an OFAC Waiv­er from sanc­tions, with spe­cif­ic terms to be fi­nalised.

Speak­ing about the deal yes­ter­day, Ma­haraj said “T&T’s abil­i­ty to ac­cess nat­ur­al gas from the Drag­on Field is a sig­nif­i­cant boost to our eco­nom­ic cir­cum­stances.

“Giv­en that gas is a ma­jor con­trib­u­tor to our na­tion­al in­come and rev­enue gen­er­a­tion, the US recog­nised the need for in­creased pro­duc­tion to build glob­al en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty, es­pe­cial­ly giv­en the en­er­gy cri­sis caused by the war.”

Ma­haraj re­placed Richie Sookhai as CCIC head last week, af­ter Sookhai was ap­point­ed to the Sen­ate. Not­ing that T&T’s pro­duc­tion lev­el has been re­duc­ing in re­cent years, con­tribut­ing to the slow­down in down­stream plants in Point Lisas, he said, “The Drag­on Field has ap­prox­i­mate­ly 4.2 tril­lion scf of gas and this will al­low us to bet­ter ful­fil the de­mands of the down­stream com­pa­nies, At­lantic LNG and elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­a­tion. In­deed, it is pos­si­ble that this in­crease in gas could fos­ter the re­open­ing of Train 1.

“Apart from the in­creased LNG pro­duc­tion, it will al­so en­hance in­creased pro­duc­tion and ex­ports of down­stream com­modi­ties such as methanol and am­mo­nia. Nat­u­ral­ly, this will all in­crease our rev­enue stream sub­stan­tial­ly and our long-term eco­nom­ic wel­fare, but at the same time, the state ought not to get dis­tract­ed by these po­ten­tial long-term gains and en­sure that they ac­cel­er­ate their agen­da to es­tab­lish re­new­able sources of pow­er gen­er­a­tion lo­cal­ly.”

He not­ed that the con­trac­tu­al arrange­ment be­tween the two coun­tries had al­so not been dis­closed.

Cou­va-Point Lisas Cham­ber of Com­merce pres­i­dent Mukesh Ram­s­ingh mean­while said the ben­e­fits to be de­rived from the deal should be pumped in­to the de­vel­op­ment of T&T’s crum­bling in­fra­struc­ture.

“This is some­thing that T&T has been wait­ing to hear for a long time, it is good news for our coun­try. When gas does come in­to pro­duc­tion, we would see the func­tion­ing of all of At­lantic LNG’s trains and the pos­si­ble con­struc­tion of more LNG trains in T&T. With this rev­enue, the Gov­ern­ment should al­so re­think the rise in elec­tric­i­ty rates.”