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Friday, May 16, 2025

PM hints at possible deals after visit to bp in London

by

Dareece Polo
528 days ago
20231205
Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley, left, and Energy and Energy Industries Minister Stuart Young off to talks at  bp’s London headquarters yesterday.

Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley, left, and Energy and Energy Industries Minister Stuart Young off to talks at bp’s London headquarters yesterday.

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Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and bp’s in­ter­im chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Mur­ray Auch­in­closs have dis­cussed prospec­tive ini­tia­tives in­clud­ing the pur­suit of deep-wa­ter ex­plo­ration and sanc­tion­ing of fu­ture projects.

Dr Row­ley met with Auch­in­closs at bp’s Lon­don head­quar­ters yes­ter­day, ac­cord­ing to a state­ment is­sued by the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter.

He was ac­com­pa­nied by the Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries and Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young as well as the pres­i­dent of bp Trinidad and To­ba­go David Camp­bell.

At the talks, bp’s ex­ec­u­tive sought to af­firm that Trinidad and To­ba­go re­mains an im­por­tant part of its glob­al op­er­a­tions. The ne­go­ti­at­ing teams work­ing to re­struc­ture At­lantic LNG were al­so praised at the dis­cus­sion.

How­ev­er, for­mer Min­is­ter of En­er­gy Kevin Ram­nar­ine said there is a lack of trans­paren­cy be­tween the par­ties in­volved on any po­ten­tial share­hold­er agree­ment to be signed.

He al­so lament­ed that nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion re­mains woe­ful­ly low in T&T.

“I am see­ing a pos­si­ble sce­nario where bp’s pro­duc­tion of nat­ur­al gas in the next 12 to 15 months could dip be­low one bil­lion cu­bic feet of nat­ur­al gas. It’s noth­ing to be proud about. It’s some­thing to be very wor­ried about. So, while the Prime Min­is­ter goes and he signs the re­struc­tur­ing of At­lantic LNG, the bot­tom line is we don’t have suf­fi­cient gas to fill those trains,” he said.

“I’m hear­ing that a like­ly date for gas from deep­wa­ter is now 2030, to­wards the end of the decade. That’s a pret­ty long way away and we need gas like right now,” he con­tin­ued.

Ram­nar­ine was re­fer­ring to Train’s 2, 3 and 4 since the re­struc­tur­ing does not ap­ply to Train 1. He al­so claimed the trains are op­er­at­ing at around 60 per cent ca­pac­i­ty, which is in­suf­fi­cient.

How­ev­er, the for­mer min­is­ter said the Drag­on Gas Deal may not be the so­lu­tion to the nat­ur­al gas short­age fac­ing the coun­try.

“We can­not bet the kitchen sink, as we are do­ing, on the Drag­on deal. We have to look for oth­er av­enues to pro­duce nat­ur­al gas in Trinidad and To­ba­go. Our deep wa­ter be­ing the biggest po­ten­tial for that. And we have to ac­cel­er­ate the di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of the Trinidad and To­ba­go econ­o­my. I am not see­ing any sort of emer­gency around ei­ther,” he added.

Mean­while, en­er­gy ex­pert An­tho­ny Paul said he was hap­py to see the Gov­ern­ment meet­ing with en­er­gy stake­hold­ers. How­ev­er, he said he was hope­ful the meet­ing was pre­ced­ed by an agree­ment on clear ac­tions and de­liv­er­ables.

At a me­dia con­fer­ence on No­vem­ber 20, Dr Row­ley told re­porters that Train 1 al­lowed the Gov­ern­ment to have a seat at the ta­ble to ne­go­ti­ate the out­come of Trains 2 and 3. He said the new arrange­ment which brings Trains 2, 3 and 4 to­geth­er al­lows the State to ben­e­fit from a per­cent­age of own­er­ship across all three. While he not­ed that own­er­ship in Train 4 was around 11 per cent, he did not say the per­cent­age for the oth­ers.


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