An­drea Perez-Sobers

En­er­gy ex­pert Dr Kr­ish­na Per­sad and for­mer per­ma­nent sec­re­tary in the En­er­gy Min­istry, hon­orary pro­fes­sor An­drew Jupiter is urg­ing the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties to look at oth­er sources such as Guyana and Suri­name, for gas which are not in po­ten­tial con­flict with Unit­ed States pol­i­cy. 

Ear­ly this month Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young an­nounced that T&T’s li­cences grant­ed by the Unit­ed States’ Of­fice of For­eign As­sets Con­trol, which would fa­cil­i­tate the ex­ploita­tion of gas fields in Venezue­lan wa­ters, have been re­voked. 

Young said the gov­ern­ment would be ex­plor­ing le­gal op­tions with re­gard to re­vers­ing the de­ci­sion of the Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment. 

This coun­try was grant­ed an OFAC li­cence on Oc­to­ber 31, 2023, paving the way for the po­ten­tial ex­trac­tion of gas from Drag­on gas field in Venezue­lan wa­ters. A sec­ond li­cence was grant­ed on May 31, 2024, for the Cocuina-Man­akin field. 

Speak­ing on the way for­ward for the en­er­gy sec­tor Dr Per­sad told Sun­day Busi­ness Mag­a­zine that Guyana and Suri­name are go­ing to be find­ing a lot more gas with no pro­cess­ing fa­cil­i­ties and that T&T should look at bring­ing gas from these two coun­tries to Trinidad via pipeline. 

“We could skirt the Venezue­lan wa­ters north and east to come around in­to the East Coast in the north­ern part of the east coast of Trinidad. We don’t get in­to con­flict with Venezuela, or we don’t get in­to Venezue­lan ter­ri­to­ry,” Per­sad said. 

Fo­cussing on gas sup­plies and the po­ten­tial gas in­side and out­side of Trinidad, he said there are a lot of small­er fields that are be­ing de­vel­oped more and more by BP and Shell and now Unit­ed King­dom-based group Peren­co, which is off the East Coast and the North Coast. There are small­er but sig­nif­i­cant re­sources of gas there. 

Al­so, Per­sad high­light­ed that Peren­co has in­her­it­ed a big­ger gas dis­cov­ery in the deep wa­ter off the coast of To­co and the com­pa­ny has in­di­cat­ed they want to de­vel­op and those should come on stream in due course.  

“In the short term, we are go­ing to have sig­nif­i­cant short­ages of gas. But in the longer term, there are sig­nif­i­cant gas re­sources in the ul­tra-deep wa­ters of the East Coast.” 

He stressed that the gas as­pect must not be the main fo­cus but al­so oil it is at a record low now for maybe a hun­dred years but there’s no need for that. 

“I have been preach­ing about car­bon diox­ide use in en­hanced oil re­cov­ery for 20 years now. Oth­er peo­ple have been preach­ing for longer. Now, we are the largest emit­ter of car­bon diox­ide per capi­ta...one of the largest in the world. And peo­ple blow hot and cold on it. Three years ago, the then Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley is­sued a di­rec­tive to Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny to start as soon as pos­si­ble with a big CO2 ER project on­shore. Noth­ing has been done yet. Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny has been talk­ing about hav­ing coun­try­wide ac­cess to CO2. Noth­ing has been done ex­cept talk,” Per­sad lament­ed. 

He out­lined that this coun­try has the po­ten­tial to in­crease oil pro­duc­tion by 100,000 bar­rels of oil per day. 

Re­vis­it­ing the gas sup­ply is­sue, the en­er­gy ex­pert said there are al­so small­er po­ten­tial gas fields on­shore and nearshore Trinidad that can be looked at and as­sessed.  

“There’s sig­nif­i­cant oil re­serves and re­sources on­shore as well as off­shore. So, at the end of the day, we have po­ten­tial sup­plies of oil and gas for decades to come. We have pro­cess­ing fa­cil­i­ties which we can use to process lo­cal­ly gen­er­at­ed gas and im­port­ed gas from oth­er sources,” Per­sad added. 

Hope for en­er­gy sec­tor  

For­mer per­ma­nent sec­re­tary in the En­er­gy Min­istry hon­orary pro­fes­sor An­drew Jupiter said look­ing be­yond Drag­on gas, this coun­try must be in­volved in the part­ner­ship, there­fore Guyana and Suri­name are good prospects to look at for gas. 

He not­ed that T&T must utilise skilled per­son­nel who are from all over the world to as­sist in push­ing the en­er­gy sec­tor for­ward. 

Jupiter stat­ed that with the var­i­ous en­er­gy com­pa­nies in­vest­ing in the sec­tor there is ac­tiv­i­ty at present, and there will be ac­tiv­i­ty in the fu­ture on land and al­so deep wa­ter. 

“There is Wood­side En­er­gy, and bpTT’s, Ca­lyp­so Deep Wa­ter Project, in 225 kilo­me­tres off­shore off the east coast that at this point in time is be­ing ex­am­ined to pro­duce gas again. All of this gas ac­tiv­i­ty I’m re­fer­ring to now is not cross-bor­der, it’s in our op­er­a­tion. What about Shell? Shell at present, an­oth­er ma­jor en­er­gy play­er, is pro­duc­ing sev­en off­shore fields and one on-shore block. I un­der­stand their in­tent to drill three wells. Shell is al­so in­volved in Dol­phin fa­cil­i­ty, east coast ma­rine area,” Jupiter de­tailed. 

In ad­di­tion to that, he said when one looks at the present op­er­a­tion, with re­spect to Greater An­gos­tu­ra fields, An­gos­tu­ra which has been pur­chased by Peren­co is a good move for­ward for this coun­try. 

Touch­ing on the down­stream, as­pect he said Pro­man which owns and op­er­ates 14 petro­chem­i­cal plants, is show­ing from their var­i­ous in­vest­ments that the com­pa­ny is pre­pared to con­tin­ue op­er­at­ing in T&T even with re­duced gas vol­umes.  

“What is that mes­sage? That mes­sage to me is that there is in­deed a great op­por­tu­ni­ty for Pro­man to con­tin­ue op­er­at­ing in T&T, be­cause bear in mind, prof­itabil­i­ty is the name of the game. I have been on gov­ern­ment del­e­ga­tions. I can say I have con­fi­dence in the tech­ni­cal ca­pa­bil­i­ty and al­so have con­fi­dence that the cor­rect de­ci­sions will be tak­en as we move for­ward for the en­er­gy sec­tor,” Jupiter added. 

Touch­stone sees T&T as vi­able

Cana­di­an en­er­gy com­pa­ny, Touch­stone Ex­plo­ration pres­i­dent and chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer, Paul Baay is cur­rent­ly fo­cused on two key ar­eas of op­er­a­tion in Trinidad. 

He said the first is the de­vel­op­ment of nat­ur­al gas projects on the east­ern side of the is­land and the sec­ond is its con­tin­ued in­vest­ment in oil pro­duc­tion in the south­west.  

Asked what scale of in­vest­ment are in­volved in these two projects Baay said ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$20 mil­lion in its nat­ur­al gas ini­tia­tives and around US$6 mil­lion in oil de­vel­op­ment and should lo­cal nat­ur­al gas prices in­crease, Touch­stone would be pre­pared to scale up its in­vest­ment ac­cord­ing­ly. 

The ex­ec­u­tive said the en­er­gy sec­tor is cru­cial to the coun­try’s econ­o­my: “Trinidad’s econ­o­my is dri­ven by the strength of its en­er­gy sec­tor. It plays a crit­i­cal role in fund­ing es­sen­tial pub­lic ser­vices such as ed­u­ca­tion, in­fra­struc­ture, and health­care. The stan­dard of liv­ing in Trinidad is close­ly tied to the strength of the en­er­gy in­dus­try—there is noth­ing more im­por­tant to the coun­try’s eco­nom­ic well-be­ing.” 

As to whether Touch­stone would re­main ac­tive in Trinidad’s en­er­gy sec­tor, Baay quick­ly said, “Ab­solute­ly.”  

“Trinidad is at the heart of our busi­ness—our on­ly pro­duc­ing as­sets are lo­cat­ed here, and we re­main 100 per cent com­mit­ted to the coun­try. With the re­cent mo­men­tum in LNG de­vel­op­ment, the out­look for the en­er­gy sec­tor in Trinidad is more promis­ing than ever. It’s a high­ly vi­able and strate­gic mar­ket for us,” he added.