The main fo­cus for new En­er­gy Min­is­ter Franklin Khan should be at­tract­ing in­vest­ments to the lo­cal en­er­gy sec­tor in the face of de­clin­ing pro­duc­tion and low com­mod­i­ty prices, Pres­i­dent of the En­er­gy Cham­ber of T&T Dax Dri­ver ad­vised yes­ter­day.

In his sec­ond Cab­i­net reshuf­fle since tak­ing of­fice, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley yes­ter­day re­voked the ap­point­ment of Nicole Olivierre and as­signed the port­fo­lio to Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) chair­man Franklin Khan.

In com­ment­ing on the move, Dri­ver said re­la­tion­ship be­tween the Cham­ber and the out­go­ing min­is­ter had al­ways been pro­fes­sion­al.

"We at the En­er­gy Cham­ber have al­ways main­tained cour­te­ous and pro­fes­sion­al work­ing re­la­tion­ships with min­is­ters' of en­er­gy. Our re­la­tion­ship with Ms Olivierre was no dif­fer­ent," he told the T&T Guardian.

Asked about some of the chal­lenges the min­is­ter dur­ing her tenure of just over a year, Dri­ver said the en­er­gy sec­tor had not been in a favourable po­si­tion dur­ing that time.

"The min­is­ter would have been con­front­ed with de­clin­ing pro­duc­tion for both oil and gas, and this in the glob­al con­text of low in­ter­na­tion­al com­mod­i­ty prices. These con­di­tions were ob­vi­ous­ly not pro­pi­tious for ei­ther the sec­tor or, from a rev­enue gen­er­at­ing per­spec­tive, the wider econ­o­my at large," he said.

He said there are enough mat­ters that could im­me­di­ate­ly en­gage the min­is­ter's at­ten­tion.

"One of the im­por­tant ar­eas for the min­is­ter to ad­dress would be the need to stim­u­late in­vest­ments in the lo­cal en­er­gy sec­tor. Par­tic­u­lar­ly in the area of gas, the gas mas­ter plan should be looked at and greater lev­els of clar­i­ty pro­vid­ed around the ex­ist­ing is­sues so that com­pa­nies in the gas val­ue chain can make the ap­pro­pri­ate busi­ness de­ci­sions ac­cord­ing­ly," he said.

Dri­ver said Khan should al­so pay at­ten­tion to tax­a­tion of en­er­gy sec­tor com­pa­nies: "The IMF has made a num­ber of rec­om­men­da­tions in this area so there is some­what of a ba­sis for dis­cus­sion in mov­ing these is­sues for­ward.

"I would al­so rec­om­mend that the new min­is­ter put some ef­fort be­hind se­cur­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties that ex­ist for T&T ser­vice com­pa­nies in for­eign ter­ri­to­ries. The mas­sive dis­cov­er­ies of oil found in Guyana, for ex­am­ple, pro­vide an oc­ca­sion for greater col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the Min­istry of En­er­gy and the Min­istry of Trade to work to­geth­er on be­half of our lo­cal en­er­gy ser­vice com­pa­nies."