Meet­ings, an­nounce­ments and com­mit­tees are not de­liv­ery. None of the five pe­tro­le­um ques­tions be­low is ad­e­quate­ly an­swered yet. The Bud­get de­bate gives Min­is­ters an op­por­tu­ni­ty to sup­ply the miss­ing com­mit­ments and ev­i­dence.

By An­tho­ny Paul

In an ear­li­er ar­ti­cle, “Look­ing for rev­enue in all the wrong places?”, I in­tro­duced a Pe­tro­le­um Sec­tor Bud­get Score­card: ques­tions the pub­lic should be able to put to any Bud­get. The Bud­get has now been pre­sent­ed. The Min­is­ter of Fi­nance has in­di­cat­ed that the En­er­gy Min­is­ters will pro­vide fur­ther de­tails dur­ing the de­bate. This as­sess­ment is writ­ten for that op­por­tu­ni­ty.

Take the re­fin­ery. Pointe-a-Pierre closed in 2018. Last Oc­to­ber, the Guardian re­port­ed En­er­gy Min­is­ter Roodal Mooni­lal’s hope of light­ing it up by the fol­low­ing Di­vali. The Bud­get now re­ports in­vestor pro­pos­als un­der eval­u­a­tion, with a cred­i­ble, com­mer­cial­ly vi­able and ful­ly fi­nanced arrange­ment as the ob­jec­tive. That is sen­si­ble. But it gives no de­ci­sion date, fi­nanc­ing plan or es­ti­mate of the State’s ex­po­sure. Di­vali is ap­proach­ing. The de­bate is the mo­ment to ex­plain what has changed and what re­mains to be done.

Gov­ern­ments of dif­fer­ent par­ties have re­port­ed meet­ings, stud­ies and agree­ments as progress. Those steps mat­ter, but their sig­nif­i­cance dif­fers. A project can reap­pear in suc­ces­sive Bud­gets with­out the pub­lic know­ing whether it has ad­vanced, stalled or changed di­rec­tion. Trans­fer pric­ing il­lus­trates the prob­lem: the speech re­ports a draft pol­i­cy and OECD re­view, with leg­is­la­tion still to come.

What counts as progress

Think of a lad­der with six rungs.

Talk means meet­ings, ex­pres­sions of in­ter­est and “po­ten­tial” in­vest­ment. An­nounce­ment means an in­ten­tion or tar­get. Process means a study, com­mit­tee, draft pol­i­cy or pro­pos­al. Com­mit­ment means an en­force­able agree­ment or au­tho­rised de­ci­sion, with re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, re­sources and a timetable es­tab­lished. De­liv­ery means the work is done: gas flow­ing or an Or­der in force. Re­sult means a pub­lished, check­able out­come mea­sured against a tar­get.

An­nounce­ments alone earn no de­liv­ery cred­it. Stud­ies are prepara­to­ry work. A com­mit­ment de­serves more weight when we can iden­ti­fy who must act, with what re­sources and by when. Re­peat­ing a promise with­out ad­vanc­ing it should in­vite an ex­pla­na­tion.

The lad­der tracks in­di­vid­ual ini­tia­tives. The five as­sess­ments ask whether the pub­lic ques­tions have been an­swered. A com­mit­ted com­pa­ny project can­not sub­sti­tute for a na­tion­al gas-al­lo­ca­tion plan. A Cab­i­net de­ci­sion can­not sub­sti­tute for im­ple­men­ta­tion. Fore­cast ques­tions re­quire trans­par­ent cal­cu­la­tions, not a con­struc­tion mile­stone. On this ba­sis, four an­swers are in­suf­fi­cient and one core ques­tion re­mains unan­swered. These ver­dicts as­sess the ev­i­dence sup­plied, not the mer­it of every project.

Cab­i­net ap­proved it but where is im­ple­men­ta­tion

Our first ques­tion is whether we are col­lect­ing the rev­enue right­ful­ly due to us. The an­swer is in­suf­fi­cient.

In 2017, the Per­ma­nent Lo­cal Con­tent Com­mit­tee made rec­om­men­da­tions to in­crease the ben­e­fits Trinidad and To­ba­go re­ceives from pe­tro­le­um ac­tiv­i­ty. It is a mul­ti-stake­hold­er, Cab­i­net-ap­point­ed com­mit­tee re­port­ing to Cab­i­net through the Min­is­ter of En­er­gy.

I was chair­man at the time and can con­firm that Cab­i­net ap­proved the rec­om­men­da­tions and di­rect­ed the Min­istry to im­ple­ment them. The rec­om­men­da­tions re­main unim­ple­ment­ed, with­out a pub­lic ex­pla­na­tion.

The or­der un­der which con­trac­tors and agents should be li­censed is on­ly one part of the pack­age. Con­sid­er­ing that over 80 per cent of rev­enue from the sale of oil and gas goes to pay­ing these 3rd par­ty sup­pli­ers, one would ex­pect that Gov­ern­ment would want to ef­fi­cient­ly cap­ture them un­der the tax net. With­out li­cens­ing, they have no oblig­a­tion to reg­is­ter in T&T or keep books and records here. They pay with­hold­ing tax, while our lo­cal sup­pli­ers pay the full cor­po­rate tax and oth­er levies. Oth­er mea­sures ad­dressed li­cens­ing, re­port­ing, ex­pen­di­ture in­for­ma­tion, cost scruti­ny, the Pe­tro­le­um Reg­is­ter and lo­cal sup­pli­ers. They could ma­te­ri­al­ly im­prove gov­ern­ment rev­enue and the for­eign ex­change re­tained here. The pack­age de­serves an im­ple­men­ta­tion re­sponse, not an­oth­er gen­er­al promise about lo­cal con­tent.

The Pe­tro­le­um Tax­es Act al­so pro­vides for a Per­ma­nent Pe­tro­le­um Pric­ing Com­mit­tee to ad­vise the Min­is­ter on fair mar­ket val­ues and pro­cess­ing fees. Gov­ern­ment can ap­point and re­source it now, fol­low­ing the statu­to­ry process, with­out wait­ing for gen­er­al trans­fer-pric­ing leg­is­la­tion.

High­er do­mes­tic with­hold­ing-tax rates alone do not re­move the Cari­com treaty re­lief up­held in the Methanex case that went all the way to the Privy Coun­cil, in which, by virtue of reg­is­ter­ing its par­ent in Bar­ba­dos, the Trinidad en­ti­ty paid ze­ro with­hold­ing tax on div­i­dends re­mit­ted to its share­hold­er. This con­cerns the rules, not an al­le­ga­tion against Methanex. The de­bate should ex­plain how that gap will be ad­dressed.

The lo­cal-con­tent rec­om­men­da­tions pre­date this Gov­ern­ment. It should ex­plain what hap­pened to the Cab­i­net de­ci­sion and pub­lish a timetable for ac­tion.

More gas for what na­tion­al ben­e­fit

The core ques­tion is unan­swered. The speech gives field pro­duc­tion es­ti­mates and ex­pect­ed de­vel­op­ment dates. Some work has al­ready been de­liv­ered; oth­er de­ci­sions re­main ahead, in­clud­ing the an­tic­i­pat­ed No­vem­ber in­vest­ment de­ci­sion for Man­akin-Co­quina.

A field’s peak out­put is not net na­tion­al sup­ply af­ter old­er fields de­cline. We need a com­bined out­look and a plan al­lo­cat­ing gas among LNG, petro­chem­i­cals, elec­tric­i­ty and oth­er us­es, show­ing what the coun­try gains from each. The ex­is­tence of projects does not an­swer the State’s al­lo­ca­tion ques­tion.

Ma­jor deals and pub­lic as­sets

The an­swer is in­suf­fi­cient. Re­fin­ery pro­pos­als are be­ing eval­u­at­ed. Exxon­Mo­bil’s seis­mic ac­qui­si­tion is re­port­ed com­plete, but the US$21 bil­lion re­mains po­ten­tial in­vest­ment. Com­plet­ed seis­mic work de­serves recog­ni­tion; it does not es­tab­lish a com­mer­cial dis­cov­ery or com­mit­ted de­vel­op­ment fi­nanc­ing.

The pub­lic needs enough in­for­ma­tion to as­sess al­ter­na­tives, com­mer­cial terms, fi­nan­cial risks and safe­guards. Nec­es­sary con­fi­den­tial­i­ty should not pre­vent Gov­ern­ment from ex­plain­ing the ba­sis of de­ci­sions about pub­lic re­sources.

Mon­ey and ca­pa­bil­i­ty that stay

The an­swer is in­suf­fi­cient. Gross ex­port earn­ings do not es­tab­lish how much for­eign ex­change re­mains af­ter im­port­ed in­puts, debt ser­vice and oth­er out­flows. In­vest­ment to­tals do not show how much work lo­cal firms win.

We need pe­tro­le­um-spe­cif­ic tar­gets and re­sults for lo­cal pur­chas­ing, skills trans­fer and ser­vice ex­ports. The Cab­i­net-ap­proved rec­om­men­da­tions be­long here too. They con­cern na­tion­al earn­ings and pro­duc­tive ca­pac­i­ty, not sim­ply a pref­er­ence for na­tion­als.

Fore­casts and sav­ings

The an­swer is in­suf­fi­cient. The Bud­get as­sumes oil at US$77 per bar­rel and gas at US$5.00 per mil­lion British ther­mal units. What hap­pens to rev­enue if prices or pro­duc­tion dis­ap­point? The pub­lic needs sen­si­tiv­i­ties and an ex­pla­na­tion of how Bud­get as­sump­tions re­late to the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund’s cal­cu­la­tions.

The speech high­lights a US$6.58 bil­lion Fund bal­ance. Sep­a­rate­ly, the Re­view of the Econ­o­my re­ports no fis­cal 2026 de­posits and US$379.6 mil­lion with­drawn. The re­port­ing pe­ri­ods dif­fer. In­vest­ment re­turns can lift a bal­ance while mon­ey leaves, so a high­er bal­ance alone does not show new sav­ing from pe­tro­le­um rev­enue. This does not es­tab­lish a breach of the Fund’s law. Pub­lish­ing the rel­e­vant rev­enue cal­cu­la­tions and de­posit tests would al­low scruti­ny.

What the de­bate can change

For each com­mit­ment, Min­is­ters should iden­ti­fy an own­er, a date, the re­sources re­quired, a mea­sure of suc­cess and a pub­lic re­port. Start with a quar­ter­ly com­mit­ment reg­is­ter cov­er­ing the ap­proved lo­cal-con­tent pack­age, the pric­ing com­mit­tee, trans­fer-pric­ing leg­is­la­tion, the re­fin­ery de­ci­sion and a gas-al­lo­ca­tion plan. Pub­lish the first with­in 100 days, record­ing orig­i­nal promis­es and ex­plain­ing de­lays.

Our re­sources be­long to us. Gov­ern­ment man­ages them on our be­half. As Di­vali ap­proach­es, the ques­tion for the re­fin­ery, and for every pe­tro­le­um com­mit­ment, is what has ad­vanced to­wards de­liv­ery and what na­tion­al ben­e­fit can be demon­strat­ed. These as­sess­ments will change when ev­i­dence clos­es the gaps.

An­tho­ny E Paul is chair­man of the Lloyd Best In­sti­tute of the Caribbean and an en­er­gy gov­er­nance, pol­i­cy and strat­e­gy ad­vis­er.