CEO of Ramps Lo­gis­tics, Shaun Ram­per­sad, wants to see more of the mon­ey gen­er­at­ed by the en­er­gy multi­na­tion­als in T&T re­tained in the coun­try. And the head of one of the re­gion's largest lo­gis­tics com­pa­nies says one of the ways to boost the in-coun­try re­ten­tion of val­ue is by en­cour­ag­ing the large en­er­gy com­pa­nies to use lo­cal en­er­gy ser­vices com­pa­nies more.

“I would re­al­ly like to see some se­ri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion giv­en to how we re­tain more val­ue in the coun­try, how more of the mon­ey that is spent by the multi­na­tion­als re­mains in the coun­try. And that has to do a lot with how we de­vel­op and grow our lo­cal ser­vices sec­tor,” Ram­per­sad said in an in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian.

His com­ments are time­ly as he not­ed there are ma­jor en­er­gy de­vel­op­ments hap­pen­ing in Guyana, Suri­name and pos­si­bly even Venezuela, where lo­cal com­pa­nies could al­so find op­por­tu­ni­ties.

De­spite hav­ing some chal­lenges in Guyana with re­gard to its lo­cal con­tent law and queries con­cern­ing in­voice de­c­la­ra­tions, Ram­per­sad ex­plained that there was much T&T could learn from the South Amer­i­can state in terms of strength­en­ing its lo­cal tal­ent.

“My ad­vice to any­body who’s go­ing to do busi­ness in those coun­tries is to go with an open mind and a sense of hu­mil­i­ty. It’s not your coun­try. There are things that are go­ing to be done dif­fer­ent­ly. Look for the right part­ner­ships. Find the right peo­ple to work with and to learn from. Take some of your best and bright­est peo­ple and look for re­al­ly good tal­ent in those coun­tries. And if you are very dis­ci­plined about your ap­proach and re­spect­ful, there are many, many op­por­tu­ni­ties over there that will work out quite well for Trinida­di­an ser­vice com­pa­nies,” said Ram­per­sad.

“When it comes to the sus­tain­abil­i­ty of how we do things dif­fer­ent­ly, I think one of the things that Guyana has done very well is their lo­cal con­tent de­vel­op­ment. I feel that there’s a big area of op­por­tu­ni­ty for us to en­sure that we de­vel­op skills and op­por­tu­ni­ties in the coun­try.

Ramps Lo­gis­tics is one of five plat­inum spon­sors of the 2026 En­er­gy Con­fer­ence and Ram­per­sad is set to be the on­ly CEO of an in­dige­nous com­pa­ny to be fea­tured at next week’s En­er­gy Con­fer­ence’s CEO pan­el this year.

He is hope­ful that his pre­sen­ta­tion at the con­fer­ence will be among the first steps in herald­ing changes in lo­cal con­tent and val­ue re­ten­tion.

“These con­fer­ences have al­ways been a mix of the biggest and the best com­pa­nies in the world, the BPs and the Shells and so on. And those have al­ways been the lead plat­inum spon­sors in the con­fer­ence. When our lead­er­ship team met, and we’ve done very well as a lo­cal com­pa­ny, we thought it was im­por­tant for lo­cal com­pa­nies to step up and take that plat­inum-spon­sored po­si­tion as well,” said Ram­per­sad in an in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian on Mon­day.

Ramps, he said, had de­vel­oped its name in the in­dus­try, but he stressed it was im­por­tant for more lo­cal com­pa­nies to de­vel­op and work along­side these glob­al pow­er­hous­es to fur­ther es­tab­lish T&T in the en­er­gy stratos­phere.

“I feel like the Ramps sto­ry is an im­por­tant sto­ry to tell, be­cause there are oth­er peo­ple who are build­ing their busi­ness­es in Trinidad and To­ba­go, not just in the en­er­gy sec­tor. You know when I think about what we’ve done as a coun­try for Car­ni­val: when I go to par­ties in Mi­a­mi and New York and Lon­don and so on, I feel like prod­uct, Trinidad and To­ba­go, brand Trinidad and To­ba­go has mas­sive glob­al ap­peal. And some­times we just need to re­mind our­selves and our fel­low Trin­bag­o­ni­ans about how beau­ti­ful our brand is,” he said.

Ram­per­sad said re­cent changes in Venezuela have added unique spice to the pot. As well, there are sev­er­al pos­i­tive re­cent de­vel­op­ments that should boost T&T’s oil and gas pro­duc­tion, which have cre­at­ed fur­ther im­pe­tus for lo­cal play­ers to step for­ward.

“Re­mem­ber, it’s our en­er­gy sec­tor, at the end of the day, the re­sources that we have with­in the coun­try, the most im­por­tant con­sid­er­a­tion for those re­sources is that it re­dounds to the ben­e­fit of the cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go,” said Ram­per­sad, “So much of the de­vel­op­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go is based on our en­er­gy sec­tor, and so much of it is based on us be­ing able to utilise those re­sources for the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go, and it’s re­al­ly crit­i­cal that our lo­cal com­pa­nies and the peo­ple of Trinidad & To­ba­go have a very strong voice at the same ta­ble that every­body else does, and I think that that’s crit­i­cal for us.”

He added, “We want to make sure that, as it’s ex­treme­ly im­por­tant to have the voice of the large multi­na­tion­als, and you al­so have to have the voice of these lo­cal ser­vice sec­tor com­pa­nies to say, Hey, lis­ten, while it’s im­por­tant for you to make mon­ey for your share­hold­ers, it’s im­por­tant for us to make sure that val­ue re­mains with­in and helps to de­vel­op Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

Ram­per­sad said T&T’s prox­im­i­ty to Venezuela, as well as its ex­per­tise, would be cru­cial to the de­vel­op­ment of Venezue­lan en­er­gy projects.

“I think that the key to un­lock­ing the in­crease in Venezue­lan pro­duc­tion re­al­ly lies in Trinidad and To­ba­go. And I think that Trinidad and To­ba­go has this unique op­por­tu­ni­ty to at­tract glob­al cap­i­tal to re­al­ly help im­prove the pro­duc­tion out of Venezuela. So when we look at the projects that are al­ready there, Lo­ran-Man­a­tee, which is prob­a­bly the project that I’m most ex­cit­ed about, it’s the largest sin­gle drilling project in the his­to­ry of Trinidad and To­ba­go. It’s go­ing to see a big in­crease in our nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion,” said Ram­per­sad who was al­so keen to see progress on the Man­akin-Cocuina field as well as the pos­si­bil­i­ty to ac­cess the Drag­on Gas field in the not dis­tant fu­ture.

He said it was cru­cial as well for the Gov­ern­ment to de­vel­op the right reg­u­la­tions to en­sure that lo­cal busi­ness­es and ser­vice providers could prop­er­ly ben­e­fit from these projects.

‘There is this op­por­tu­ni­ty for us, if we do it right, and if things work well, if the gov­ern­ment sets the right reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work and that we have the right voic­es in the room be­tween Gov­ern­ment, the multi­na­tion­als and the ser­vice com­pa­nies, we have this re­al op­por­tu­ni­ty to bring the Trin­bag­on­ian en­er­gy sec­tor, not just back to the glo­ry days, but to make it even big­ger. And that’s re­al­ly ex­cit­ing,” he said, adding that he was heart­ened to see En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr. Roodal Mooni­lal in­tro­duce an over­sight com­mit­tee called the En­er­gy Ac­cel­er­a­tor Hub, which is tasked with the fast track­ing of ap­provals in the en­er­gy sec­tor.

Ram­per­sad said, “That’s one of the things that gets me the most ex­cit­ed, be­cause one of the chal­lenges we’ve had as an en­er­gy sec­tor is the ease of do­ing busi­ness and how long it took, even when we had com­pa­nies who were very in­ter­est­ed in the sec­tor, and they were bring­ing their cap­i­tal, both fi­nan­cial and hu­man, it has tak­en three to five years to get to the point where we could even start drilling. We have to get that down in be­low two years. And if we get it down to be­low two years, and even down to 18 months, then we go from be­ing one of the most dif­fi­cult places to work in terms of ap­proval to one of the best, and that’s the kind of vi­sion­ary think­ing and lead­er­ship that will get us to a much stronger sus­tain­able en­er­gy sec­tor.”

Ram­per­sad said T&T shares cul­ture and ge­og­ra­phy sim­i­lar­i­ties with the three coun­tries, stress­ing that in­creas­ing lo­cal re­turns from the en­er­gy sec­tor and es­tab­lish­ing a pres­ence in those coun­tries were cru­cial to ad­dress­ing the on­go­ing for­eign ex­change con­straints cur­rent­ly fac­ing in the coun­try.