DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

For­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Stu­art Young is warn­ing that multi­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions could be ma­noeu­vring to take the lead on Trinidad and To­ba­go’s long-de­layed Drag­on Gas project, po­ten­tial­ly push­ing the State to the mar­gins of fu­ture ne­go­ti­a­tions.

Young raised the con­cern af­ter dis­clos­ing that he was con­tact­ed by an in­ter­na­tion­al en­er­gy in­tel­li­gence an­a­lyst, who said En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal dis­cussed Drag­on Gas at In­dia En­er­gy Week 2026, which runs from Jan­u­ary 27 to 30.

The for­mer min­is­ter ques­tioned why Mooni­lal did not at­tend the re­cent En­er­gy Cham­ber con­fer­ence at the Hy­att Re­gency in Port-of-Spain, ar­gu­ing that the Gov­ern­ment has failed to present a co­her­ent strat­e­gy or demon­strate trans­paren­cy on the fu­ture of the project.

Ac­cord­ing to Young, that si­lence risks weak­en­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go’s po­si­tion at a crit­i­cal mo­ment, par­tic­u­lar­ly if ne­go­ti­a­tions are be­ing dri­ven pri­mar­i­ly by for­eign in­ter­ests rather than the State.

“He can’t talk about it in Trinidad and To­ba­go. They can’t even ac­knowl­edge, both him­self and Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who is the pres­i­dent of Venezuela, who owns the Drag­on gas. They can’t even talk about that. He can’t an­swer ques­tions in Par­lia­ment about it. None of them have been to Venezuela. None of them has spo­ken to the Venezue­lan Gov­ern­ment.”

“The pur­suit of Drag­on gas is be­ing done, if it is be­ing done, by the multi­na­tion­al com­pa­nies, and that could nev­er be to the ben­e­fit of Trinidad and To­ba­go. We must al­ways be at the ta­ble lead­ing the dis­cus­sions as the Gov­ern­ment to pro­tect the in­ter­ests of Trinidad and To­ba­go. So why did he avoid the En­er­gy Cham­ber right here in Port-of-Spain, cost us tax­pay­ers hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars to go on a gal­li­vant­i­ng lime in In­dia, and god knows what he spoke about there.”

The com­ments come amid es­ca­lat­ing ten­sions be­tween the Gov­ern­ment and the En­er­gy Cham­ber, fol­low­ing the ad­min­is­tra­tion’s de­ci­sion to boy­cott the Cham­ber’s an­nu­al en­er­gy con­fer­ence.

For the first time in more than a decade, the event went ahead with­out the par­tic­i­pa­tion of state-owned en­er­gy com­pa­nies or se­nior gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials.

Young ac­cused Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar of “bul­ly­ing” the En­er­gy Cham­ber af­ter the or­gan­i­sa­tion an­nounced it would re­view its Safe to Work (STOW) pro­gramme and in­ter­nal op­er­a­tions.

“We (the PNM gov­ern­ment) did ab­solute­ly noth­ing to down­grade the lev­els of safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty in the en­er­gy in­dus­try, and we would not in­ter­fere with that ... STOW is a pri­vate cer­ti­fi­ca­tion. STOW is not a cer­ti­fi­ca­tion that is re­quired by leg­is­la­tion or by gov­ern­ment edict. So once again, it’s the bul­ly­ing and in­tim­i­da­tion of a Gov­ern­ment ba­si­cal­ly get­ting in­volved in an area, maybe they shouldn’t. They’re try­ing to sell it as though they’re help­ing the small con­trac­tors. We were all for that,” he said.

On Mon­day, En­er­gy Cham­ber chair Mala Bali­raj ac­knowl­edged the back­lash the or­gan­i­sa­tion re­ceived from the Prime Min­is­ter and sig­nalled a change in tone, com­mit­ting to re­flec­tion, re­view and re­form.

The dis­pute in­ten­si­fied last week when the Prime Min­is­ter pub­licly dis­tanced her Gov­ern­ment from the En­er­gy Cham­ber, de­scrib­ing its an­nu­al con­fer­ence as a “farce.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar con­firmed that she was in­vit­ed by let­ter dat­ed June 24, 2025, to be the fea­tured speak­er at the con­fer­ence, which opened on Jan­u­ary 26, but said she de­clined to at­tend.

She strong­ly crit­i­cised the cham­ber, de­scrib­ing it as “greedy” and ac­cus­ing it of pur­su­ing nar­row spe­cial in­ter­ests while en­gag­ing in ex­clu­sion­ary and ex­ploita­tive be­hav­iour.

The Prime Min­is­ter said the cur­rent struc­ture of the En­er­gy Cham­ber pri­mar­i­ly serves for­eign multi­na­tion­al com­pa­nies and se­lect lo­cal in­ter­est groups, rather than the wider na­tion­al in­ter­est.

She al­so al­leged that the or­gan­i­sa­tion had weaponised the STOW pro­gramme.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal for com­ment, but he did not re­spond up to the time of pub­li­ca­tion.