When Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar took the de­ci­sion back in June last year to reshuf­fle her Cab­i­net, one of the un­ex­plained changes that she made was to re­place the Min­is­ter of En­er­gy, Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan, the Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for San Fer­nan­do West, with Sen­a­tor Kevin Ram­nar­ine. There were those who ar­gued that chang­ing the Min­is­ter of En­er­gy so quick­ly-Mrs Seep­er­sad-Bachan held the top post in the coun­try's main rev­enue-earn­ing min­istry for 13 months-might have sent the wrong sig­nal to the for­eign in­vestors who con­tin­ue to dom­i­nate T&T's en­er­gy in­dus­try. But there were oth­ers who were pre­pared to give Mr Ram­nar­ine the ben­e­fit of the doubt, giv­en the fact that he is a young, en­er­getic and am­bi­tious man who is still un­der 40 and that he came to the min­istry with the best com­bi­na­tion of ex­pe­ri­ence and aca­d­e­m­ic cre­den­tials of any Min­is­ter of En­er­gy since Bar­ry Barnes. The cur­rent Min­is­ter of En­er­gy has a de­gree in pe­tro­le­um en­gi­neer­ing and he has spent most of his work­ing life in the in­dus­try with a four-year stint at the En­er­gy Cham­ber and two years as a se­nior re­searcher at British Gas, one of the coun­try's main for­eign in­vestors. He al­so served as the ju­nior min­is­ter in the Min­istry of En­er­gy, un­der Mrs Seep­er­sad-Bachan, for 13 months.\

In one of the ear­ly in­ter­views he did with­in the first month, Mr Ram­nar­ine said he found that the min­istry had been in a state of re­struc­tur­ing for the last sev­en years, which had cre­at­ed "an en­vi­ron­ment of un­cer­tain­ty." Mr Ram­nar­ine brings knowl­edge of the in­dus­try to the job. And as a man un­der 40 in charge of one of the coun­try's most im­por­tant min­istries, he is al­so anx­ious to make his mark and get things done quick­ly. Re­fer­ring then to the changes that he want­ed to in­tro­duce at the min­istry, Mr Ram­nar­ine spoke about a trans­for­ma­tion that was meant to in­clude a new or­gan­i­sa­tion­al struc­ture and a re­cruit­ment dri­ve to bring new peo­ple in­to the min­istry and to fill a num­ber of va­cant posts. These changes were meant to ad­dress one of the main chal­lenges iden­ti­fied by the min­is­ter, which was the re­ten­tion of some of the min­istry's young tal­ent, the en­er­gy as­so­ciate pro­fes­sion­als, who are T&T na­tion­als work­ing at the min­istry as a con­di­tion of the schol­ar­ships they re­ceived. In the in­ter­view, the then new min­is­ter said: "What I have de­scribed for you is a sit­u­a­tion of lim­bo and un­cer­tain­ty and we want to bring that sit­u­a­tion to an end and bring cer­tain­ty and struc­ture to the min­istry. The min­istry is too crit­i­cal to the coun­try. It has to be lean and mean and that is what we are go­ing to do in the next six months."

Hav­ing just re­cent­ly marked his sixth month at the min­istry, it is a good bet that the Min­is­ter of En­er­gy would now con­cede that he needs much more than six months to en­sure that his min­istry is the "lean and mean" ma­chine that he en­vis­aged when he was first ap­point­ed. While there has been some progress, one of the ar­eas that the Min­istry of En­er­gy must fo­cus on is in speed­ing up the length of time that the Gov­ern­ment takes to make de­ci­sions in the en­er­gy sec­tor. If T&T is to com­pete with Brazil and Colom­bia in the West­ern Hemi­sphere, then the speed, clar­i­ty and pro­fun­di­ty of the de­ci­sions tak­en by the Cab­i­net must be su­pe­ri­or to those coun­tries. And the speed of de­ci­sion mak­ing must be fol­lowed up by a tremen­dous im­prove­ment in the speed of im­ple­men­ta­tion of con­tracts. The oth­er area that the Min­istry of En­er­gy must fo­cus on is in lever­ag­ing the Gov­ern­ment's 49 per cent stake in Cli­co, which con­trols 56 per cent of the four mil­lion tonne per an­num methanol pro­duc­er, MHTL, to fa­cil­i­tate the de­vel­op­ment of a down­stream methanol in­dus­try. The Min­istry of En­er­gy, and the min­is­ter in par­tic­u­lar, must find the means to en­sure that MHTL's fu­ture will en­rich and ben­e­fit all of T&T rather than just a few ex­ec­u­tives, a few hun­dred em­ploy­ees and the for­eign part­ners who have grown wealthy by ex­ploit­ing the coun­try's nat­ur­al gas re­sources.