An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

As the con­ver­sa­tion con­tin­ues about the move to ex­plore oil and gas pos­si­bil­i­ties in Grena­da’s ter­ri­to­ries, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal is wait­ing to re­ceive the rel­e­vant doc­u­men­ta­tion from over the years for a dis­cus­sion with the Grena­da gov­ern­ment to move the idea for­ward. 

Dur­ing Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s speech at the swear­ing-in of her Cab­i­net at the Pres­i­dent’s House on Sat­ur­day, she said she had her sights set on nat­ur­al gas talks with sev­er­al Cari­com states, in­clud­ing Grena­da, Guyana, and Suri­name. 

In Ju­ly 2018, the whol­ly state-owned Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) fi­nalised a com­mer­cial agree­ment with the Glob­al Pe­tro­le­um Group (GPG) op­er­at­ing in Grena­da, ac­cord­ing to an ar­ti­cle in the OECS Busi­ness Fo­cus. The agree­ment was said to mark a ma­jor de­vel­op­ment in the col­lab­o­ra­tion and en­er­gy co­op­er­a­tion among Cari­com coun­tries and was called an im­por­tant pil­lar in grow­ing and strength­en­ing the re­gion’s economies. 

The agree­ment laid the foun­da­tion for a broad spec­trum of co­op­er­a­tion ac­tiv­i­ties, in­clud­ing:  

(a) de­vel­op­ment and im­ple­men­ta­tion of tech­ni­cal pro­grammes, projects, and ac­tiv­i­ties;  

(b) con­duct of joint seis­mic sur­veys and joint ex­plo­ration;  

(c) im­ple­men­ta­tion of joint de­vel­op­ment plans for the uni­ti­sa­tion of hy­dro­car­bon reser­voirs ex­ist­ing in the re­spec­tive con­ti­nen­tal shelves of both coun­tries; and

(d) con­duct of joint bid rounds. 

T&T’s Min­istry of En­er­gy said at the time that the MoU was first such agree­ment be­tween T&T and an­oth­er Cari­com coun­try, ex­e­cut­ed with­in a frame­work for the fur­ther de­vel­op­ment of the re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion move­ment as en­vis­aged in the Re­vised Treaty of Ch­aguara­mas, which called for the de­vel­op­ment of the re­gion’s nat­ur­al re­sources on a sus­tain­able ba­sis. 

In a tele­phone in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian on Tues­day, Mooni­lal said he was ex­pect­ed to meet with the chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cers from the state en­er­gy sec­tor yes­ter­day (Wednes­day), and was hop­ing to get those re­ports. On the ba­sis of that, his min­istry will then make di­rect con­tact with its coun­ter­parts at the min­istries of En­er­gy or Min­er­al Re­sources as the case may be in the three ter­ri­to­ries of Grena­da, Guyana and Suri­name.  

“We are aware that the project ran in­to some trou­ble sev­er­al years ago but T&T is in a po­si­tion where sure­ly, we can as­sist giv­en the great in­ter­est we have in do­ing busi­ness in the gas-based in­dus­tries and the close­ness of Grena­da to us both phys­i­cal­ly and from a Cari­com part­ner per­spec­tive,” the min­is­ter out­lined. 

The T&T En­er­gy Cham­ber, in a state­ment, con­firmed that nat­ur­al gas was dis­cov­ered in the wa­ters be­tween Grena­da and Trinidad in 2017 with the Nut­meg well, but there has been very lim­it­ed in­for­ma­tion about the find since then. 

When the field was be­ing ex­plored, the cham­ber said all of the sup­port ser­vices for the pro­gramme were staged through Trinidad, with the ac­tive in­volve­ment of En­er­gy Cham­ber mem­ber com­pa­nies in the ser­vices sec­tor. It is not­ed that if this field can be eco­nom­i­cal­ly de­vel­oped, there will be an ex­cel­lent op­por­tu­ni­ty to ex­port gas in­to the Trinidad gas net­work through the ex­ist­ing in­fra­struc­ture.  

“The down­stream petro­chem­i­cal and LNG in­dus­try in Trinidad could quick­ly mon­e­tise any gas re­sources in Grena­da. A part­ner­ship be­tween T&T and Grena­da presents an ex­cit­ing op­por­tu­ni­ty to de­vel­op these re­sources for the ben­e­fit of both economies,” the cham­ber added. 

At a news con­fer­ence on Mon­day, for­mer En­er­gy Min­is­ter Port-of-Spain North/St Ann’s West MP, Stu­art Young, not­ed it is pre­sump­tu­ous to get T&T ex­cit­ed over re­serves that may not even yield fruit.  In­stead, his ad­vice to the new ad­min­is­tra­tion would be to con­tin­ue to per­suade in­ter­na­tion­al gas com­pa­nies to work with this coun­try. He said fail­ure to do so would cause T&T prob­lems. 

“Every pos­si­bil­i­ty with our Cari­com neigh­bours was al­ready be­ing ex­plored, and this hold­out for some field called Nut­meg in Grena­da. I pray to God that there are re­serves there, and maybe ex­plo­ration wells will find it in the years to come. But it is nowhere close to the mar­ket,” Young ex­plained.  

How­ev­er, the new En­er­gy Min­is­ter re­spond­ing to Young’s state­ment, said it’s shock­ing that he would say that the Nut­meg field is not fea­si­ble, but the Drag­on Gas deal, which is caught up in the most in­tense geopo­lit­i­cal con­flict of the cen­tu­ry so far, Young thought that that was fea­si­ble.  

On the for­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter say­ing that every pos­si­bil­i­ty was ex­plored with the Cari­com neigh­bours, Mooni­lal said the op­po­site. He not­ed that there is no doc­u­men­ta­tion and there’s no gov­ern­ment-to-gov­ern­men­tarrange­ment be­tween T&T and any Cari­com ter­ri­to­ry that is an en­er­gy pro­duc­er.  

“I was shocked, I was un­der the im­pres­sion that the for­mer gov­ern­ment would have been ac­tive­ly en­gaged in var­i­ous arrange­ments, par­tic­u­lar­ly with Guyana, which is far ad­vanced in terms of its pro­duc­tion and mar­ket­ing of oil and gas.  I was tak­en aback that there was no gov­ern­ment-to-gov­ern­ment agree­ment,” he ex­plained. 

Gas quan­ti­ty was not suf­fi­cient

Speak­ing on the is­sue, for­mer NGC di­rec­tor An­drew Jupiter re­vealed that gas was found in Grena­da wa­ters, but at that time, it was not in com­mer­cial quan­ti­ties. 

“I don’t think they found oil. I can­not re­mem­ber any oil. It was gas. It was not in com­mer­cial quan­ti­ties. And if it’s not in com­mer­cial quan­ti­ties, then ob­vi­ous­ly you’re un­able to pro­duce it. I un­der­stood then that some of the play­ers who drilled it were from Rus­sia. So since I left about 2018, I have not heard any­thing about that again as such be­tween Grena­da and NGC,” Jupiter added. 

Asked if it was a good idea to re­vis­it ex­plor­ing gas in Grena­da, the for­mer di­rec­tor said, “We need medi­um-term. We need it long-term. Grena­da’s gas can­not be ei­ther short-term or medi­um-term be­cause they have not quan­ti­fied how much gas is in Grena­da. They have not quan­ti­fied how much gas it is. You can­not look for some­thing, go be­hind some­thing if you do not know how much it is.” 

He con­tin­ued, “You knew how much was in Drag­on field? Sure, go be­hind Drag­on. You knew how much was in Guyana and Suri­name? You can go to Guyana and Suri­name.” 

Jupiter made it clear that those things do not come on stream right away.  “Those are medi­um to long-term, not short-term.  There­fore, if you talk about rev­enue streams, you will not have that rev­enue stream now. You have to fo­cus on the re­serves that we have in our bor­ders, he added.