En­er­gy Min­is­ter Roodal Mooni­lal has sig­nalled a re­set in this coun­try’s ap­proach to re­gion­al en­er­gy diplo­ma­cy, ad­mit­ting that pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tions failed to syn­chro­nise T&T’s hy­dro­car­bons strat­e­gy with de­vel­op­ments in Guyana and Suri­name.

Speak­ing on the sec­ond day of the Guyana En­er­gy Con­fer­ence and Sup­ply Chain Ex­po in George­town, Mooni­lal po­si­tioned Port-of-Spain as an in­dus­tri­al part­ner ready to sup­port emerg­ing pro­duc­ers, while con­ced­ing that op­por­tu­ni­ties for clos­er align­ment had not been ful­ly pur­sued in re­cent years.

Ad­dress­ing del­e­gates, Mooni­lal said the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion, led by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, has giv­en a clear pol­i­cy di­rec­tive since tak­ing of­fice in April 2025 to deep­en en­gage­ment with its Cari­com neigh­bours on en­er­gy in­te­gra­tion and long-term plan­ning.

He ac­knowl­edged that col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween T&T and Guyana had not ad­vanced as it should have, adding that the Gov­ern­ment now in­tends to build a more struc­tured frame­work for co­op­er­a­tion. Among the pro­pos­als out­lined was the cre­ation of a for­mal plat­form bring­ing to­geth­er re­gion­al en­er­gy min­is­ters and their tech­ni­cal teams on a re­cur­ring ba­sis to co­or­di­nate pol­i­cy, in­vest­ment plan­ning, and in­fra­struc­ture de­vel­op­ment.

Mooni­lal ar­gued that with­out sys­tem­at­ic di­a­logue, there is a risk of du­pli­ca­tion in cap­i­tal-in­ten­sive projects across the re­gion. A stand­ing fo­rum, he sug­gest­ed, would al­low gov­ern­ments to align fis­cal in­cen­tives, reg­u­la­to­ry regimes and down­stream strate­gies, par­tic­u­lar­ly as Guyana and Suri­name ex­pand their up­stream out­put.

In pitch­ing T&T as a strate­gic part­ner, Mooni­lal point­ed to the coun­try’s ma­ture en­er­gy ecosys­tem. He cit­ed decades of op­er­a­tional ex­pe­ri­ence, es­tab­lished pipeline net­works, liq­ue­fied nat­ur­al gas fa­cil­i­ties and petro­chem­i­cal plants as as­sets that could ac­cel­er­ate gas mon­eti­sa­tion for new­er pro­duc­ers.

Rather than con­struct­ing en­tire­ly new pro­cess­ing ca­pac­i­ty, he in­di­cat­ed that Guyana and Suri­name could lever­age ex­ist­ing down­stream in­fra­struc­ture in T&T to move gas in­to high­er-val­ue prod­ucts more quick­ly and at low­er cap­i­tal cost.

The min­is­ter al­so ref­er­enced on­go­ing ef­forts to re­vive the Pointe-à-Pierre re­fin­ery, shut­tered in 2018, not­ing that a restart would re­quire re­li­able re­gion­al crude sup­plies. He told par­tic­i­pants that T&T is open to dis­cus­sions with Guyana and oth­er stake­hold­ers on po­ten­tial feed­stock arrange­ments should the re­fin­ery re­turn to op­er­a­tions.

Hy­dro­car­bons re­main cen­tral to T&T’s econ­o­my, de­spite de­clin­ing pro­duc­tion over the past decade. The coun­try is pur­su­ing new ex­plo­ration, in­clud­ing the ul­tra­deep­wa­ter acreage award­ed to Exxon­Mo­bil east of Trinidad and north of Guyana’s Stabroek Block, while al­so ex­am­in­ing prospects tied to cross-bor­der re­sources with Venezuela.