Along with most mem­bers of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, the En­er­gy Cham­ber of T&T has ex­pressed its full sup­port of the sate of emer­gency and oth­er gov­ern­ment ini­tia­tives aimed at re­duc­ing crime and pro­mot­ing law and or­der. As the Prime Min­is­ter and oth­er gov­ern­ment min­is­ters and of­fi­cials have recog­nised, how­ev­er, the in­tro­duc­tion of a 9 pm to 5 am cur­few in ma­jor towns and cities has in­evitably had an ad­verse im­pact on busi­ness. This im­pact will ob­vi­ous­ly be felt most se­vere­ly in the en­ter­tain­ment and hos­pi­tal­i­ty sec­tor, but it has al­so had an im­pact on oth­er sec­tors, in­clud­ing the en­er­gy sec­tor.

The en­er­gy sec­tor is the lifeblood of our econ­o­my. It runs 24 hours a day, sev­en days a week, 365 days a year. While the ma­jor­i­ty of the phys­i­cal plant in the sec­tor is out­side of the cur­few ar­eas, be­ing ei­ther off­shore, in rur­al south Trinidad, Point Fortin or in the Point Lisas area, the cur­few still has an im­pact on peo­ple work­ing in the sec­tor and trav­el­ling to and from the work sites. It is there­fore im­por­tant to as­sess how the state of emer­gency has im­pact­ed on the en­er­gy sec­tor and, by ex­ten­sion, our mem­ber­ship. We car­ried out a sam­ple sur­vey from our mem­ber­ship-se­lect up­stream, down­stream and mid­stream op­er­a­tors as well as the en­er­gy ser­vices com­pa­nies-to as­cer­tain the in­flu­ence of the state of emer­gency on their busi­ness­es.

Sur­vey re­sults

The sur­vey high­light­ed how the state of emer­gency has af­fect­ed in­di­vid­ual com­pa­nies' pro­duc­tion, the spe­cif­ic chal­lenges com­pa­nies face due to the state of emer­gency and the in-com­pa­ny so­lu­tions put in place to counter these chal­lenges. Based on re­sults, 54 per cent of re­spon­dents not­ed that the state of emer­gency has af­fect­ed the pro­duc­tion or the vol­ume of their busi­ness while 46 per cent of re­spon­dents re­port­ed no change in the val­ue and vol­ume of their busi­ness. Most op­er­at­ing com­pa­nies in both the up­stream and petro­chem­i­cals sec­tor did not re­port that the state of emer­gency and cur­few had a ma­jor im­pact on their ac­tu­al pro­duc­tion as yet. How­ev­er, it has led to de­lays in the im­ple­men­ta­tion of main­te­nance or con­struc­tion projects and drilling pro­grammes, po­ten­tial­ly lead­ing to con­strained pro­duc­tion in the fu­ture.

These de­lays have had a more im­me­di­ate im­pact on ser­vice com­pa­nies and con­trac­tors who have had to slow down or post­pone the im­ple­men­ta­tion of ac­tiv­i­ties. The com­pa­nies af­fect­ed cite main­te­nance de­lays, can­cel­la­tion of shifts, trans­porta­tion de­lays and prob­lems as­so­ci­at­ed with trav­el for em­ploy­ees liv­ing in des­ig­nat­ed cur­few ar­eas. Some have al­so cit­ed de­lays caused by in­ter­na­tion­al teams post­pon­ing trav­el to Trinidad. Tra­di­tion­al­ly, the oil­field sec­tor has start­ed work ear­ly in the morn­ing, and some of the work sites are long dis­tances from main pop­u­la­tion cen­tres on mi­nor roads. The 5 am cur­few has meant that start times for morn­ing shifts have been de­layed. Even out­side of the cur­few ar­eas, some mem­ber com­pa­nies have re­port­ed that po­lice road blocks have dis­cour­aged work­ers from trav­el­ling to work sites dur­ing cur­few hours.

A num­ber of oth­er chal­lenges has been iden­ti­fied by re­spon­dents:

• in­creased de­mur­rage charges, in­creased over­time claims

• trans­porta­tion from the air­port and he­li­port

• ab­sen­teeism and con­trac­tor shift man­age­ment

De­lays at the two ma­jor ports have cre­at­ed con­cerns for a num­ber of projects, as equip­ment and sup­plies need­ed by the sec­tor may not be avail­able as planned.

Com­pa­nies have had to be cre­ative in coun­ter­ing these chal­lenges. Some of the com­pa­nies sur­veyed have had to change their shift times, re­duce work­ing hours or even use video­con­fer­enc­ing to com­mu­ni­cate dur­ing cur­few hours.

The per­mit­ting process

The process of at­tain­ing per­mits for em­ploy­ees to trav­el dur­ing cur­few hours was al­so ad­dressed in the sur­vey. More than three-quar­ter of the re­spon­dents claimed they have not yet re­ceived the per­mits they be­lieve are nec­es­sary for their key staff to trav­el dur­ing cur­few hours. While the ma­jor en­er­gy sec­tor com­pa­nies do now ap­pear to have been able to get the nec­es­sary per­mits, these com­pa­nies, in turn, re­ly on the ser­vices of con­trac­tors and ser­vice com­pa­nies. The ma­jor­i­ty of these ser­vice com­pa­nies and con­trac­tors re­port that they have not been able to get per­mits for staff mem­bers. It is ex­treme­ly im­por­tant that crit­i­cal staff in the en­er­gy sec­tor have the abil­i­ty to trav­el dur­ing the cur­few hours as they need to be on-call if there are any emer­gency sit­u­a­tions on a plant or a fa­cil­i­ty. In a num­ber of cas­es, it is al­so im­por­tant that con­trac­tor staff al­so have ac­cess to per­mits to be able to trav­el.

While it is op­er­a­tor staff who au­tho­rise work, on the whole, it is con­trac­tors who do the ac­tu­al tech­ni­cal work at plants or in the oil­fields. The En­er­gy Cham­ber has been in com­mu­ni­ca­tion with rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties to try to find mech­a­nisms to min­imise the im­pact of the lim­it­ed state of emer­gency on the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, in par­tic­u­lar, through is­su­ing per­mits to key staff mem­bers. Con­tin­ued com­mu­ni­ca­tion and iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of the com­pa­nies in need of per­mits will help avoid any com­pli­ca­tions and we stand ready to as­sist in any way pos­si­ble to en­sure the smooth dis­tri­b­u­tion of these per­mits.

Con­clu­sion

While the state of emer­gency will in­evitably have an im­pact on peo­ple's lives and on busi­ness pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, the En­er­gy Cham­ber recog­nis­es that these sac­ri­fices are nec­es­sary if we are to root out the crim­i­nal el­e­ment in our so­ci­ety. We trust that these mea­sures will be short-lived and have a rapid im­pact on the crime sit­u­a­tion, whilst recog­nis­ing that con­tin­ued ef­forts will have to be made to ad­dress the un­der­ly­ing caus­es of crime. Crime not on­ly acts as a de­ter­rent to new in­vest­ment, but in­creas­es the cost of do­ing busi­ness, and, at a time when the coun­try needs to at­tract sig­nif­i­cant in­vest­ment, any mea­sures to re­duce crime can on­ly be ben­e­fi­cial to the coun­try's short-, medi­um- and long-term growth.