On Tuesday evening, president of the National Gas Company, Indar Maharaj, made a presentation to invited members of the media on the state-owned company's financial performance, its markets and customers as well as its many corporate social responsibility contributions to the country's sporting and cultural organisations.
Following the presentation, Mr Maharaj took some questions:
Q: There is no doubt that NGC has a glorious past, but people are interested in its future. All the news is of gas curtailment and tales of woe in energy sectior. What is NGC's future in terms of negotiating contracts with BG and BP?
A: To a large extent the gas master plan that the Ministry of Energy has commissioned and I know its almost completed, will to a great extent determine policy for gas allocation.
I think we will find the solution, albeit it might not be an immediate solution but I think we will find the solution to some of the problems in there.
I think to a large extent we have come to recognise where we are in terms of our history and present situation with respect to natural gas and using that we will have to determine a stretgy going forward with respect to how we will utilize the remaining nartural gas that we have.
Our current strategic plan, 2010 to 2015, will expire at the end of this year. We are in the process of developing a new strategic plan to take us from 2015 to 2020. We are doing rigorious analysis to determine and we are going to address some of these issues as we go forward. No doubt, we will have to recognize that we will have to secure what we have in T&T.
We have to understand that NGC as a company cannot continue to be inward looking, seeing our only place of investment as T&T but rather we have to start moving towards becoming a global investor so we will be able to bring income back to the country to replace losing income from big resources.
Q: How are the plans for outward investment doing?
A: We have been working on that since last year. We have engaged a major international consulting organisation who have been working with us. They have done this with many of the multinationals in the past and have the experience, the knowlege and are working with us to develop these plans. We are training a core group opf locals so that they will be able to take up this work and move forward. That has been happening since September last year.
Q: Where is NGC going to find new gas to continue the development of T&T?
A: If I look at oil production in the 1980s, we would have been doing 250,000 barrels per day. Despite our best efforts, we are probably doing 80,000 barrels per day now. The fact of the matter is hydrocarbon resources are not renewable. Once we begin extracting from the ground, we will eventually run out. These resources were developed over millions of years and they will not be replaced in a short time. We cannot change that.
We are attempting to find resouerces that may be exist there that we may not have been able to discover. With improved technology, areas which we searched before, we are going back to search again, which we can do with improved technlogy.
We also have unexplored areas which the Ministry of Energy in last couple years has been aggressively marketing and licensing out unexplored blocks, so we will be able to find new resorces in there. The fact is the major multinational companies involved in exploration and production,will not bid for these blocks and spend money on these blocks unless there is a realistic chance of getting oil and gas.
There was a period in time between 2005 and 2010 when there was very little exploration taking place. That has now increased tremendously and now with this increased activity, we expect to find additional reserves of hydrocarbopns.
In addition to that there are deepwater blocks which maybe ten years ago no one had the technology to go out search these blocks. That is now happening and BHP and BP have been acquiring these blocks and BHP has been actively searching these blocks to estabklish the presence of oil and gas.
The other source that has already been found and is waiting to be produced is the cross-border fields between Trinidad and Venezuela. There is a dedicated office in NGC working with the Ministry towards being able to bring those fields into production. If we can get that down, and we are very optimistic about it, then that will add tremendously to our current reserves and available gas.
We have to accept the fact that do what you may, the gas will deplete at some point and we have to plan ahead. This is why we are moving towards globalization of the NGC so as we make investments on the outside, we will be able top bring income into the country to replace what we are losing.
It is not a short term thing that will happen in a year or two, but the point is we have started on that journey and we will continue on that journey come what may.