For decades, the En­er­gy Con­fer­ence has been the sound­ing board for strate­gies on the fu­ture path of the coun­try's en­er­gy sec­tor, bring­ing to­geth­er in­dus­try, acad­e­mia and Gov­ern­ment to analyse the trends and put for­ward strat­a­gems to help the sec­tor progress and be sus­tain­able. The theme for this year's con­fer­ence is Strik­ing the Bal­ance and the con­fer­ence comes at a time when the coun­try has to find ways of re­vi­tal­is­ing oil pro­duc­tion, fur­ther di­ver­si­fy our gas mar­kets, re­assess gas con­tracts and link our man­u­fac­tur­ing and en­er­gy sec­tors. While 2012 will see more than US$2.5 bil­lion in up­stream in­vest­ment as well as plans for melamine man­u­fac­ture and oth­er down­stream projects come to fruition, we must take a big pic­ture view of the sec­tor. Giv­en the need for sus­tained en­er­gy in­vest­ment, the coun­try must come up with nu­anced plans to in­te­grate our en­er­gy val­ue chain, es­pe­cial­ly amidst an ever-evolv­ing in­vest­ment cli­mate.

We must iden­ti­fy how we can im­prove our com­pe­ten­cies and ex­port our en­er­gy sec­tor ex­per­tise to in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets while pay­ing close at­ten­tion to the im­pact glob­al de­vel­op­ments have on our coun­try's eco­nom­ic growth. The 2012 con­fer­ence will up the ante as we fea­ture a cadre of top notch lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al speak­ers fo­cus­ing on the im­pact of shale gas de­vel­op­ment, the eco­nom­ics of deep­wa­ter ex­plo­ration, T&T's role as a gate­way to the South Amer­i­can fron­tier, new in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets for lo­cal en­er­gy ser­vices com­pa­nies as well as the glob­al cli­mate change chal­lenge. While the con­fer­ence will not pro­vide all the an­swers, as in pre­vi­ous years, we are sure it will pro­vide a space and be a breed­ing ground for schemes to take T&T's en­er­gy sec­tor to the next di­men­sion.

Some of the head­line speak­ers for this year's con­fer­ence in­clude: Kevin Ram­nar­ine, Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy Af­fairs; Stephen Cadiz, Min­is­ter of Trade and In­dus­try, Dr Ar­man­do Zamo­ra, in­de­pen­dent con­sul­tant and for­mer di­rec­tor gen­er­al of Colom­bia's Na­tion­al Hy­dro­car­bon Agency (ANH); Ab­dul­lah Bazid, ex­ec­u­tive vice pres­i­dent for strat­e­gy and plan­ning, SABIC; Amy My­ers Jaffe, as­so­ciate di­rec­tor of the En­er­gy Pro­gramme at Rice Uni­ver­si­ty's James A Bak­er III In­sti­tute for Pub­lic Pol­i­cy; Hatem Soli­man, pres­i­dent, Schlum­berg­er Latin Amer­i­ca, and Dr Liz Jol­ley, vice pres­i­dent ex­plo­ration, BP Amer­i­c­as.

Zamo­ra's unique per­spec­tive and ex­pe­ri­ences as the for­mer leader of Colom­bia's state oil reg­u­la­tor will bring an added di­men­sion to the con­fer­ence. Giv­en T&T's goal to re­vi­talise oil pro­duc­tion, there are sev­er­al lessons that the coun­try can learn from Colom­bia on at­tract­ing pri­vate sec­tor in­vest­ment in­to state en­er­gy en­ter­pris­es to boost pro­duc­tion. In the past four years, Colom­bia has in­creased its oil pro­duc­tion by 43 per cent af­ter un­der­go­ing a se­ries of in­sti­tu­tion­al re­forms. The coun­try as­sessed its fal­ter­ing pro­duc­tion and de­cid­ed to open its state oil com­pa­ny to pri­vate sec­tor eq­ui­ty in­vest­ment. The move helped to im­prove cor­po­rate gov­er­nance and per­for­mance. ANH was al­so re­formed to pro­mote in­vest­ment in­to the en­er­gy sec­tor.

ANH's ag­gres­sive mar­ket­ing cam­paigns and its in­ter­face with the in­vest­ment com­mu­ni­ty helped Colom­bia un­der­stands just what was nec­es­sary for busi­ness­es to thrive and re­turn to the coun­try. The coun­try's fis­cal regime was al­so re­vamped, le­gal statutes act­ing as bar­ri­ers to for­eign busi­ness­es were amend­ed and en­vi­ron­men­tal reg­u­la­tions, to abet rather than hin­der ac­tiv­i­ty, were im­ple­ment­ed. These in­sti­tu­tion­al, reg­u­la­to­ry and fis­cal re­forms have seen a spike in pro­duc­tion in Colom­bia and the cham­ber feels T&T can def­i­nite­ly learn from Colom­bia's mod­el through Zamo­ra's par­tic­i­pa­tion at the con­fer­ence. The con­fer­ence al­so plans to pro­vide a de­tailed look at down­stream petro­chem­i­cal in­dus­tries and a glob­al out­look on down­stream in­vest­ment. We will fea­ture an ad­dress by Ab­dul­lah Bazid, ex­ec­u­tive vice-pres­i­dent of Cor­po­rate Strat­e­gy and Plan­ning for Sau­di Ba­sic In­dus­tries Cor­po­ra­tion (SABIC). SABIC is one of the world's lead­ing man­u­fac­tur­ers of chem­i­cals, fer­tilis­ers, plas­tics and met­als. In 2010, SABIC had net in­come, sales rev­enue and to­tal as­sets of US$5.5 bil­lion, US$40.5 bil­lion and US$84.5 bil­lion, re­spec­tive­ly.

Bazid fo­cus­es on the de­vel­op­ment and growth of SABIC, both or­gan­i­cal­ly and through merg­ers and ac­qui­si­tions, and his per­spec­tive will be in­valu­able, es­pe­cial­ly as the coun­try looks to at­tract con­tin­ued down­stream in­vest­ment.

The con­tent at the con­fer­ence is usu­al­ly well re­ceived by the sec­tors' lead­ers.

This year on Feb­ru­ary 8, the third day of the con­fer­ence, there will al­so be sev­er­al work­shops on re­new­able en­er­gy and en­er­gy ef­fi­cien­cy, de­vel­op­ing stan­dards for car­bon cap­ture and se­ques­tra­tion and on un­der­stand­ing oil and gas re­serves. Fi­nal­ly, we would like to thank our es­teemed spon­sors for their con­tin­ued sup­port. Our plat­inum spon­sors are: bpTT, Methanex, Rep­sol, Schlum­berg­er and Trin­i­ty Ex­plo­ration. Our gold spon­sors are: At­lantic, BG T&T, Cen­tri­ca, CGX En­er­gy Inc, First Cit­i­zens, Petrotrin, SABIC, The Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny and TSTT. Our sil­ver spon­sors are AS­CO, Bay­field En­er­gy Ltd, BHP Bil­li­ton, Caribbean An­a­lyt­i­cal Ser­vices Ltd (CASL), EOG Re­sources, Flu­or/Sum­mit, Hal­libur­ton, Methanol Hold­ings Trinidad Ltd (MHTL), Neal and Massy Wood Group, Per­fec­tion Ser­vices Ltd, RBG T&T Ltd, Stork Tech­ni­cal Ser­vices, Unipet, Ter­ri­to­r­i­al Ser­vices Ltd and Tuck­er En­er­gy Ser­vices.

For more in­for­ma­tion on the con­fer­ence, please vis­it www.tten­er­gy­con­fer­ence.org

EN­ER­GY CHAM­BER