An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers

@guardian.co.tt

For­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Stu­art Young has re­ject­ed claims by the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion that it has bro­ken new ground in re­gion­al en­er­gy co­op­er­a­tion, ar­gu­ing that all sub­stan­tive ini­tia­tives with Guyana and Suri­name were ad­vanced un­der the pre­vi­ous Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment gov­ern­ment.

Young main­tained that since the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress ad­min­is­tra­tion led by Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar took of­fice in May 2025, there have been no new achieve­ments in the en­er­gy sec­tor.

He point­ed in­stead to the shut­down of Nu­trien and what he de­scribed as a de­cline in com­pet­i­tive­ness with­in the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor.

He con­tend­ed that col­lab­o­ra­tion with Guyana and Suri­name was for­malised un­der the PNM through signed agree­ments and on­go­ing dis­cus­sions. Ac­cord­ing to Young, arrange­ments were al­so con­clud­ed with Staat­solie, Suri­name’s state-owned oil com­pa­ny, and in­vest­ments were be­ing pur­sued in Guyana across so­lar, gas and ex­trac­tive in­dus­tries.

“There is not a sin­gle new ini­tia­tive that Kam­la Per­sad Bisses­sar’s gov­ern­ment has achieved in the en­er­gy sec­tor to date—not one,” Young said.

On cross-bor­der and near-bor­der nat­ur­al gas dis­cus­sions with Venezuela, Young ar­gued that the Gov­ern­ment is not en­gaged in di­rect ne­go­ti­a­tions with the Bo­li­var­i­an Re­pub­lic and that such an ap­proach would not be in T&T’s in­ter­est. He stat­ed that it was the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion that se­cured a 30-year ex­plo­ration and pro­duc­tion li­cence for the Drag­on gas field and a 20-year li­cence for Cocuina, along with Of­fice of For­eign As­sets Con­trol’s ap­provals in the name of the T&T’s Gov­ern­ment. He dis­tin­guished those arrange­ments from li­cences now held in the names of Shell plc and BP plc.

Young ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of at­tempt­ing to claim cred­it for ini­tia­tives al­ready con­clud­ed and of mis­rep­re­sent­ing the record.

His com­ments came a day af­ter Min­is­ter of En­er­gy Roodal Mooni­lal sig­nalled a re­set in re­gion­al en­er­gy diplo­ma­cy while ad­dress­ing the Guyana En­er­gy Con­fer­ence and Sup­ply Chain Ex­po in George­town.

Mooni­lal ac­knowl­edged that clos­er syn­chro­ni­sa­tion be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go and its re­gion­al neigh­bours had not pro­gressed as it should have in re­cent years. He out­lined plans for a struc­tured frame­work for co­op­er­a­tion, in­clud­ing a re­cur­ring plat­form for re­gion­al en­er­gy min­is­ters and tech­ni­cal teams to co­or­di­nate pol­i­cy, in­vest­ment plan­ning, and in­fra­struc­ture de­vel­op­ment.

He al­so pro­mot­ed T&T’s es­tab­lished en­er­gy in­fra­struc­ture, in­clud­ing pipelines, liq­ue­fied nat­ur­al gas fa­cil­i­ties, and petro­chem­i­cal plants  as a base that could sup­port faster gas mon­eti­sa­tion for emerg­ing pro­duc­ers rather than du­pli­cat­ing cap­i­tal-in­ten­sive as­sets.

Mooni­lal fur­ther ref­er­enced dis­cus­sions on the pos­si­ble restart of the Pointe-à-Pierre re­fin­ery, shut­tered in 2018, and in­di­cat­ed open­ness to po­ten­tial crude sup­ply arrange­ments should op­er­a­tions re­sume.