This week's an­nu­al en­er­gy con­fer­ence host­ed by the En­er­gy Cham­ber pro­vid­ed a fo­rum for ex­ec­u­tives work­ing in this coun­try's most im­por­tant sec­tor to meet and ex­change ideas about how glob­al changes will af­fect the way busi­ness is done here. One of the is­sues that got more trac­tion this year than pre­vi­ous­ly is the idea that there must be greater align­ment be­tween the al­lo­ca­tion of risks and re­wards along the lo­cal petro­chem­i­cal val­ue chain from the well­head to the gas sta­tion.

The think­ing be­hind this idea is that the en­ter­pris­es that take the least risks should have the low­est re­ward, while those that take the great­est risks should be en­ti­tled to the largest re­wards. While the idea of a risk/re­ward con­tin­u­um has the­o­ret­i­cal le­git­i­ma­cy, there is lit­tle doubt that it is be­ing prop­a­gat­ed by those who feel their com­pa­nies are not be­ing ad­e­quate­ly com­pen­sat­ed for the risks they are be­ing asked to take by the Gov­ern­ment.

The par­tic­u­lar risks in­clude the ex­ploita­tion of the deep wa­ters off Trinidad's east and north­east coast, which has been de­scribed as the coun­try's new province and whose ex­plo­ration and de­vel­op­ment the Gov­ern­ment is anx­ious to start as a means of ex­tend­ing the life of the en­er­gy sec­tor. The cur­rent con­tes­ta­tion be­tween risks and re­wards has gained greater salien­cy as the Gov­ern­ment is about to em­bark on ne­go­ti­a­tions to up­date the long-term sup­ply con­tracts of bpTT and BG, two of the coun­try's largest pro­duc­ers of nat­ur­al gas.

http://www.guardian.co.tt/dig­i­tal/new-mem­bers