Yvonne?Ba­boolal

Petrotrin's oil pro­duc­tion has de­clined from 64,500 bar­rels per day in Oc­to­ber 2006 to 45,000 in Oc­to­ber 2016. The State-owned com­pa­ny's Trin­mar op­er­a­tions' oil pro­duc­tion al­so de­clined from 33,000 bar­rels of oil per day in 2006 to 21,000 in 2016.

Petrotrin chair­man Pro­fes­sor An­drew Jupiter, in re­veal­ing the wor­ry­ing trend at an En­er­gy Caribbean Con­fer­ence at the Trinidad Hilton and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre yes­ter­day, warned that if things con­tin­ue to be done the same way, oil pro­duc­tion will con­tin­ue to de­cline.

Jupiter was one of sev­er­al speak­ers rep­re­sent­ing the en­er­gy in­ter­ests of dif­fer­ent Caribbean coun­tries speak­ing at the start of a pri­vate two-day con­fer­ence to look at sus­tain­able en­er­gy sources for the Caribbean in new oil and gas fron­tiers, off­shore deep-wa­ter plays and re­new­able en­er­gy.

He said in­creas­ing op­er­a­tional and cap­i­tal costs and in­suf­fi­cient cash gen­er­a­tion to fund in­vest­ments, were some of the chal­lenges Petrotrin is fac­ing at present.

Giv­ing some op­tions, he said by work­ing to­geth­er with the Oil­field Work­ers Trade Union (OW­TU), Gov­ern­ment and oth­er stake­hold­ers Petrotrin can in­crease its oil pro­duc­tion in the com­ing years.

"It's a part­ner­ship you have to de­vel­op to come up with short and medi­um pro­grammes to first ar­rest the oil de­cline and then in­crease pro­duc­tion," he said.

Jupiter's dis­clo­sures about Petrotrin's de­clin­ing pro­duc­tion echoed state­ments made by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley dur­ing an ad­dress to the na­tion in Sep­tem­ber when he ad­vised cau­tion in con­sump­tion pat­terns.

Row­ley had said: "For the last ten years we have been sit­ting on a cri­sis in the oil pro­duc­tion side and we have al­lowed it to es­cape us large­ly be­cause the sit­u­a­tion has been masked by rel­a­tive­ly strong rev­enue stream bol­stered large­ly by favourable prices.

"The sit­u­a­tion can no longer es­cape our at­ten­tion and sus­tained low­er prices now and in­to the medi­um term should be a mat­ter of great con­cern to all of us."

The PM added: "These de­vel­op­ments have se­ri­ous con­se­quences for our rev­enue base and must of ne­ces­si­ty sig­nif­i­cant­ly raise cau­tion in our con­sump­tion pat­terns and debt man­age­ment ac­tiv­i­ties."

Jupiter, a for­mer Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary in the En­er­gy Min­istry, spoke to the small group in the Hilton Ball­room on the way for­ward for Petrotrin and its role in the de­vel­op­ment of T&T's en­er­gy sec­tor.

He said Petrotrin's acreage is not as much as some be­lieve and he wants to re­quest and ac­quire acreage re­lin­quished to the State af­ter 2012.

He said there are op­por­tu­ni­ties for de­vel­op­ment at Petrotrin since as­sets are lo­cat­ed in pro­lif­ic hy­dro­car­bon basins which are rel­a­tive­ly un­ex­plored.

Jupiter said the com­pa­ny has con­tributed across all sec­tors of T&T's econ­o­my as the largest crude oil pro­duc­er and sec­ond largest re­al es­tate hold­er. Petrotrin has al­so made a sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tion to com­mu­ni­ty de­vel­op­ment, played a sig­nif­i­cant role in job cre­ation and paid bil­lions of dol­lars in tax­es, he said.