This coun­try’s Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries, Sen­a­tor Franklin Khan, this week as­sumed Pres­i­den­cy at the 50th Latin Amer­i­can En­er­gy Or­ga­ni­za­tion (OLADE) Meet­ing of Min­is­ters.

A re­lease from the Min­istry con­firms that the Min­is­te­r­i­al Meet­ing took place vir­tu­al­ly, on Thurs­day 19 No­vem­ber 2020.

Min­is­ter Khan re­port­ed­ly presided over the Min­is­te­r­i­al Po­lit­i­cal Di­a­logue, dur­ing which dis­cus­sions fo­cussed on the role of the en­er­gy sec­tor in post-pan­dem­ic eco­nom­ic re­cov­ery, as well as the role of re­new­able en­er­gy in the en­er­gy ma­trix of mem­ber coun­tries. 

The Min­is­te­r­i­al Meet­ing al­so re­ceived pre­sen­ta­tions on the En­er­gy Out­look from the In­ter­na­tion­al En­er­gy Agency (IEA), and the In­ter­na­tion­al Re­new­able En­er­gy Agency (IRE­NA).

Trinidad and To­ba­go al­so par­tic­i­pat­ed re­cent­ly in the 54th Coun­cil of Ex­perts Meet­ing (held pri­or to the Min­is­te­r­i­al Meet­ing be­tween Mon­day 16 and Wednes­day 18 No­vem­ber 2020), as part of OLADE’s 5th En­er­gy Week.  The Coun­cil of Ex­perts Meet­ing was chaired by Pene­lope Brad­shaw-Niles, Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary (Ag) of the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries.

T&T and OLADE

The Meet­ing of Min­is­ters of OLADE is viewed as the fore­most gath­er­ing of En­er­gy Min­is­ters of Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean.  OLADE—the Latin Amer­i­can En­er­gy Or­gan­i­sa­tion—came in­to ex­is­tence with the sign­ing of the Li­ma Agree­ment in 1973.

Trinidad and To­ba­go has been a mem­ber of the Or­gan­i­sa­tion since its in­cep­tion and plays a lead­ing role in the re­gion­al group­ing’s en­er­gy de­vel­op­ment and pol­i­cy di­rec­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly with re­spect to mat­ters in­volv­ing the Caribbean sub-group.

Through OLADE, Trinidad and To­ba­go ben­e­fits from var­i­ous train­ing pro­grammes and has ac­cess to nu­mer­ous jour­nals and pub­li­ca­tions and is privy to en­er­gy re­lat­ed da­ta sets.