Pao­lo Ker­na­han

Ad­dic­tion to oil is not unique to T&T. Many na­tions have ac­knowl­edged the de­bil­i­tat­ing ef­fects of this af­flic­tion and are com­mit­ting re­sources to re­search and de­vel­op­ment to wean their pop­u­la­tions off of this source of en­er­gy. There can be no deny­ing that glob­al de­pen­dence on fos­sil fu­els will be with us for decades to come. The ad­dic­tion in the T&T con­text though is far more se­vere.

Di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion is a mes­si­ah whose name we con­tin­ue to call in vain even as our hy­dro­car­bon re­sources con­tin­ue to dwin­dle and, along with them, our hopes for sus­tained eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment. The pho­to­graph on the front page of the Guardian news­pa­per of the Prime Min­is­ter toast­ing Petrotrin big sawaties with de­li­cious jars of oil suc­cinct­ly cap­tions our en­dur­ing dilem­ma.

Sev­er­al econ­o­mists have jumped in with valu­able con­tri­bu­tions on the im­port of this oil find in the wider con­text; the Op­po­si­tion chimed in with "it's a hoax!" for good mea­sure (even though just days be­fore Op­po­si­tion MP Colm Im­bert was quot­ed as hav­ing said "...the re­al ef­fect of this find is noth­ing.")

Sig­nif­i­cant­ly, though, as en­er­gy ex­perts have point­ed out, the 48-mil­lion-bar­rel dis­cov­ery can­not as­suage more press­ing con­cerns over the steadi­ly de­clin­ing pro­duc­tion of this cursed com­mod­i­ty at state pay­mas­ter Petrotrin. The most re­cent fig­ures show an out­put be­low 90,000 bar­rels per day.

While the dis­cus­sion rages on about ex­ist­ing hy­dro­car­bon re­serves and the "God is ah Tri­ni" gaffe by the Prime Min­is­ter, a very im­por­tant el­e­ment of this equa­tion seems to have been lost on the com­men­ta­tors but cer­tain­ly was not lost on the pub­lic.

One caller to "ra­dio PNM" this week point­ed out that "it go take at least 24 monts be­fore de man on de street see any ah de ben­e­fit from dat oil so doh let dem fool yuh!" This was the pre­dictable in­ter­pre­ta­tion of what was clear­ly a knee-jerk cam­paign to dis­tract the coun­try from the sus­tained bom­bard­ment of one scan­dal af­ter an­oth­er, threat­en­ing to scut­tle the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship and re­duce it to its use­less con­stituent parts.

One might be tempt­ed to say the ra­dio caller's com­ment was a sim­ple­ton's analy­sis of an is­sue that the av­er­age mind could not be ex­pect­ed to process. Well let's look at what the ex­perts in the Gov­ern­ment have to say. En­er­gy Min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine felt it nec­es­sary to point out that rev­enue from the "Ju­bilee" dis­cov­ery will not be re­flect­ed in the 2012-2013 bud­get as pro­duc­tion would be­gin 12 months on.

The min­is­ter en­vi­sions that rev­enues pulled out of that hole (be­cause it is sim­ply a nat­u­ral­ly oc­cur­ring, an­cient de­posit of cash) will on­ly be­come avail­able in 2014, con­ve­nient­ly one year be­fore the gen­er­al elec­tion is due. Still not see­ing the nexus be­tween that state­ment and ex­pec­ta­tions of the man in the street? Well then you on­ly need go to the Prime Min­is­ter her­self.

"So what does it now mean for the man in the street, for the cit­i­zen of Trinidad and To­ba­go? In a phrase if I would sum it up, I would say bet­ter times in the best of ini­tia­tives that will ben­e­fit you the cit­i­zen of Trinidad and To­ba­go." This week there was a news re­port that res­i­dents of east Port-of-Spain have warned of mass protests if they do not get jobs. Right-think­ing folk would per­haps ask, "Well, what are you qual­i­fied to do? What are the skills sets of the com­mu­ni­ty?"

It is no longer fair to ask these ques­tions be­cause the Prime Min­is­ter has made it clear that the Gov­ern­ment is get­ting ready to "make it rain." That Kam­la is fol­low­ing the tra­jec­to­ry of every post-in­de­pen­dence leader of this coun­try, stok­ing pub­lic pas­sions, keep­ing them firm­ly pressed to the boun­ti­ful bo­som that flows with oil.

A far cry, in­deed, from the woman who would shock the na­tion and cer­tain­ly Cari­com on at­tain­ing of­fice by telling re­gion­al lead­ers that T&T is not an ATM. She was sound­ly crit­i­cised for do­ing, al­beit in­del­i­cate­ly, what this coun­try des­per­ate­ly need­ed-sig­nalling the ad­vent of an era of fis­cal re­straint and re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.

This Gov­ern­ment sus­tained heavy bat­ter­ing for its fail­ure to ac­cede to the de­mands of robbed Cli­co pol­i­cy­hold­ers ever in­sis­tent that tax­pay­ers must meet the in­vest­ment ex­pec­ta­tions sold to them by now dis­ap­peared Cli­co ex­ec­u­tives. Fi­nance Min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an held his ground, even as oth­ers with­in the Part­ner­ship rou­tine­ly un­der­mined him. He would al­so bear the brunt of en­mi­ty read­i­ly sup­plied by the labour move­ment, the lead­ers of which thought a seat in gov­ern­ment would give them ac­cess to the state ac­count.

The Gov­ern­ment's po­si­tion ap­peared im­mov­able, five per cent is all that the coun­try could af­ford at this time. With the in­ter­ven­tion of the Labour Min­is­ter at Petrotrin, five per cent is now off the bar­gain­ing ta­ble per­ma­nent­ly, hence the pro­tract­ed and vi­o­lent protests at Trinidad Ce­ment Ltd.

For­mer Min­is­ter of Plan­ning Mary King was caught out of her wick­et and gave the UNC an ear­ly vic­to­ry over the Con­gress of the Peo­ple. Her rea­soned opin­ion still res­onates, how­ev­er, she strong­ly sug­gests that any mon­ey de­rived from hy­dro­car­bon ex­ploita­tion should be fun­nelled in­to true di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of the econ­o­my.

This will not hap­pen, of course, as the Gov­ern­ment re­verts to the typ­i­cal de­fault set­ting of all po­lit­i­cal par­ties-con­vert oil rev­enues to vote cap­i­tal. Cur­rent Plan­ning Min­is­ter Bhoe Tewarie was on tele­vi­sion this week at­tempt­ing to in­ject some san­i­ty in­to the de­bate by point­ing out that we can­not start spend­ing mon­ey that we don't have.

Quite rea­son­able, as most ex­perts will tell you an es­ti­mate of re­serves does not trans­late au­to­mat­i­cal­ly in­to cold hard cash. Vari­ables such as qual­i­ty, pro­duc­tion costs and glob­al mar­kets all have in­flu­ence. For sup­port­ers of this Gov­ern­ment, how­ev­er, he is just pee­ing in the punch bowl.

When this coali­tion was amal­ga­mat­ed in record time, it came to the pub­lic with the as­sur­ance of a con­cert­ed fo­cus on di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of the econ­o­my to pre­pare the coun­try for a fu­ture af­ter oil. This has been aban­doned and we are now trav­el­ling the same dead-end path that gov­ern­ments have em­barked on since in­de­pen­dence.

No one in this ad­min­is­tra­tion seems to have the courage or the cre­ative thought to par­lay hy­dro­car­bon rev­enues in­to a de­vel­op­men­tal frame­work up­on which na­tive tal­ents can flour­ish. Why both­er any­way? There will be mon­ey avail­able to feed sup­port­ers/con­trac­tors, thus per­pet­u­at­ing the cy­cle of de­pen­den­cy. We will for­ev­er be cursed with a pop­u­la­tion ed­u­cat­ed to ex­pect mon­ey for noth­ing (pam­pers and milk for chil­dren that the State must sup­port), a wealthy busi­ness class whose par­ty af­fil­i­a­tions af­ford them lu­cra­tive con­tracts, and a ban­dit class al­ways ready to kill us all for their share.

Our pol­i­tics holds fast the phi­los­o­phy that you can­not ef­fect change out­side of pow­er, yet as it is at­tained the sole fo­cus is keep­ing it. As cit­i­zens who be­lieved in change, our hopes float­ed on the mel­liflu­ous words of politi­cians who sold us the dream of "new" pol­i­tics. We should have known that their dream is down in that Ju­bilee hole; en­dur­ing pow­er through sub­ju­ga­tion of the mass­es.