Renu­ka Singh

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said yes­ter­day there are no plans for a sec­ond ex­ten­sion to the cur­rent State of Emer­gency (SoE).

The cur­few was al­ready ex­tend­ed once and of­fi­cial­ly lifts at the end of this month.

The Prime Min­is­ter re­turned from his first over­seas trip since the coun­try went in­to lock­down last year.

He at­tend­ed the COP26 sum­mit in Glas­gow and was in the Unit­ed King­dom for en­er­gy dis­cus­sions.

Dr Row­ley re­turned to the coun­try last night and gave an up­date of his trip to the me­dia and the pub­lic.

“The State of Emer­gency comes to an end at the end of this month and no I don’t have any in­ten­tion of ask­ing the Par­lia­ment to ex­tend it,” he said in re­sponse to ques­tions from the me­dia.

The cur­few, he said, aris­es out of the State of Emer­gency and once the SoE ends the cur­few goes with it.

“I think by now we would have got­ten in­to a rou­tine and I think by now the pop­u­la­tion should be able to cope and to do what needs to be done be­cause this is no longer a short-term sit­u­a­tion,” he said.

“This sit­u­a­tion that we are in, we are in it for the long haul,” Row­ley said.

The Prime Min­is­ter said that he did not have to wear a mask while in Glas­gow.

“I think the UK Gov­ern­ment as a mat­ter of pol­i­cy de­ter­mined that COVID is en­dem­ic and there­fore the pop­u­la­tion is be­ing asked to ac­cept that it is go­ing to be with us, but the UK is very heav­i­ly vac­ci­nat­ed,” he said.

With re­gards to the en­er­gy meet­ings in the UK, Row­ley said that on No­vem­ber 17, Shell and the Gov­ern­ment would sign off on the amend­ed Prod­uct Shar­ing Con­tract to ac­cess the 27 per cent of the Man­a­tee field that be­longs to T&T.

The Prime Min­is­ter said that while the COP26 sum­mit sought ways to move away from hy­dro­car­bons, the re­al­i­ty is that T&T is a gas pro­duc­er. He said that the dri­ve to move away from tra­di­tion­al fos­sil fu­els like coal means that the mar­ket for gas has widened.

Row­ley said that he was sup­posed to meet with the Emir of Qatar to fur­ther dis­cuss the con­tin­u­a­tion of gas sup­ply on the in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket but that meet­ing was post­poned to next year.

The Prime Min­is­ter al­so said that as he now had to en­force the point that gas was clean­er than tra­di­tion­al fos­sil fu­els.

“It is a fact that gas is clean­er than coal and oil. The trou­ble is that if you take the po­si­tion that all hy­dro­car­bons should be out of the mar­ket be­cause you are dam­ag­ing the at­mos­phere then we have to say that that is not fea­si­ble. If you are go­ing to stop us­ing coal then you have to use more gas,” Row­ley said.

“So right now, in deal­ing with the coal prob­lem, the mar­ket for gas is the bet­ter op­tion and for­tu­nate­ly for us, we are on the gas side of sup­ply,” he said.