Ke­jan Haynes

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

ke­jan.haynes@guardian.co.tt

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal says the Man­a­tee gas project re­mains se­cure and will con­tin­ue as planned de­spite re­cent moves by Venezuela’s Na­tion­al As­sem­bly to de­clare Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar per­sona non gra­ta and to end bi­lat­er­al en­er­gy agree­ments with Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Speak­ing yes­ter­day, Mooni­lal said he had ver­i­fied in­for­ma­tion con­firm­ing that “the Man­a­tee project is safe and will pro­ceed.” He added, “Those projects con­tin­ue. We will con­tin­ue to speak with Shell in par­tic­u­lar and oth­er stake­hold­ers con­cern­ing an ex­pan­sion in gas pro­duc­tion from Man­a­tee.”

He dis­missed spec­u­la­tion that the project was in jeop­ardy fol­low­ing Venezuela’s ac­tions. “I took note of an­oth­er dai­ly state­ment say­ing the Man­a­tee project is in dan­ger be­cause of the de­c­la­ra­tions in Venezuela. I can con­firm that he’s wrong,” Mooni­lal said, re­fer­ring to crit­i­cism from for­mer prime min­is­ter and en­er­gy min­is­ter Stu­art Young.

Mooni­lal said de-uni­ti­sa­tion arrange­ments al­ready in place al­lowed each coun­try to de­vel­op gas re­sources in­de­pen­dent­ly. “Be­cause of that process that had been used to de-uni­tise that project and en­sure that coun­tries de­vel­op in their own wa­ters, that con­tin­ues,” he ex­plained.

Pressed to say who in Venezuela had as­sured him the project was safe, Mooni­lal de­clined to give specifics. “We con­duct our busi­ness through all our stake­hold­ers and on diplo­mat­ic, state-to-state re­la­tions. We work through the Min­istry of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs,” he said.

Mooni­lal main­tained that T&T was not de­pen­dent on Venezue­lan gas. “We have a ro­bust plan for ex­plo­ration, pro­duc­tion, and de­vel­op­ment of oil and gas on­shore with Her­itage, and off­shore with sev­er­al multi­na­tion­als, in­clud­ing Shell, BP, EOG, and Paren­co. We have ab­solute­ly no com­mer­cial re­la­tion­ship with Venezuela as it re­lates to gas. We do not pro­duce any­thing at this point. We are not los­ing a dol­lar,” he said.

On the joint Cocuina-Man­akin project with BP, Mooni­lal said work was pro­gress­ing. “We are pro­ceed­ing in terms of the busi­ness of li­cens­ing and so on. We now have the li­cence to have trans­ac­tions with the Drag­on Gas Project, and that will con­tin­ue,” he said.

Ad­dress­ing the Na­tion­al As­sem­bly’s mo­tion, he quipped, “If the Prime Min­is­ter of Trinidad and To­ba­go is per­sona non gra­ta, then it is clear that if the Prime Min­is­ter is per­sona non gra­ta, I am min­is­ter non gra­ta. It is al­most ab­surd to think that if the Prime Min­is­ter is not wel­come in a par­tic­u­lar ju­ris­dic­tion, as Min­is­ter of En­er­gy, I would be wel­come. I am hear­ing that and see­ing that, and I want to tell you that, with great re­spect, I think some of the folks on that side of the bor­der have gone lo­co.”

On the wider geopo­lit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion and its pos­si­ble im­pact on en­er­gy prices, Mooni­lal said T&T con­tin­ued to mon­i­tor de­vel­op­ments close­ly. “Any zone of con­flict in the world that in­volves oil-pro­duc­ing na­tions will have an im­pact on the price of oil and sup­ply. We mon­i­tor that on a dai­ly ba­sis and are hop­ing there is no great fall­out,” he said.

He not­ed that while T&T is not a ma­jor oil pro­duc­er, out­put had im­proved since the Gov­ern­ment took of­fice. “When we left, it was 78,000 bar­rels a day. When we took of­fice, it was 38,000 bar­rels per day. To­day, we are hap­py to record that we are at 54,000 bar­rels per day, and it is go­ing in the right di­rec­tion,” he said.

When asked about the broad­er mar­ket im­pli­ca­tions yes­ter­day, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the Gov­ern­ment re­mained alert but calm. “We’ve al­ways had price shocks and pro­duc­tion shocks. We’ve been able to weath­er those thus far, and we con­tin­ue to mon­i­tor the prices on the world mar­ket. At this point in time, we have no cause for con­cern. If and when that hap­pens, I will share it with you as soon as it comes to me,” she said.

Ru­mours of off­shore evac­u­a­tions de­bunked

Amidst re­ports yes­ter­day that ac­tive-du­ty sol­diers had been or­dered to re­port to mil­i­tary bases, ru­mours be­gan to swirl that sev­er­al off­shore work­ers re­port­ed be­ing in­struct­ed to leave their plat­forms. Sev­er­al mes­sages reach­ing Guardian Me­dia said on­ly es­sen­tial per­son­nel were told to re­main in place. How­ev­er, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal di­rect­ed the me­dia to a re­lease from Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um which said ,”there have been re­ports of em­ploy­ees leav­ing work ear­ly to­day. Please be ad­vised that no of­fi­cial com­mu­ni­ca­tion or ap­proval was is­sued au­tho­ris­ing ear­ly de­par­ture from the of­fice. All em­ploy­ees are re­mind­ed to ad­here to reg­u­lar work­ing hours un­less oth­er­wise di­rect­ed by man­age­ment.”