Michelle Loubon

Point Fortin MP Paula Gopee-Scoon is chal­leng­ing the Gov­ern­ment to con­form to meet in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards in the en­er­gy sec­tor. She made the com­ment in her con­tri­bu­tion to the bud­get de­bate in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives at Tow­er D, Wa­ter­front Com­plex, Wright­son Road, Port-of-Spain on Fri­day. She said the Op­po­si­tion was hold­ing the Gov­ern­ment and the En­er­gy Min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine ac­count­able for the $700 mil­lion which he said was re­quired to up­grade the Sol­da­do West De­vel­op­ment Plan. She said al­so that Petrotrin plans to spend $1.2 bil­lion and most of it will go to Trin­mar.

Ze­ro­ing in on Petrotrin, she said: "We (T&T) con­sume 20 per cent of Petrotrin's prod­ucts and the rest of it goes to ex­ports for which we must con­form to in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards. With­out these plants, there would be no hope for ex­ports. These goods are avail­able else­where and Petrotrin is forced to be com­pet­i­tive." At the same time, she ad­mit­ted, there were in­creased project costs due to vari­ables like the short­age of steel. Gopee-Scoon said the move to­ward gas op­ti­mi­sa­tion pro­grammes and ul­tra low sul­phur diesel were "re­quired to meet strin­gent qual­i­ty spec­i­fi­ca­tions".

She said: "An im­proved sul­phur project was nec­es­sary if you have to be com­pet­i­tive on the mar­ket. It was re­quired for the lo­cal, re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets. We have to con­tin­ue with the drilling pro­gramme and the joint ven­ture in­vest­ments. I am par­tic­u­lar­ly pleased about the in­vest­ment in the Sol­da­do West de­vel­op­ment plan." She ac­cused the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship of adding "no mon­e­tary val­ue to the en­er­gy sec­tor". She said: "The UNC-led coali­tion lacks cred­i­bil­i­ty. "Big busi­ness re­quires big mon­ey. And there is no con­fi­dence of busi­ness­es putting them­selves at risk. For­eign in­vestors can choose to take their busi­ness else­where."

Gopee-Scoon re­mind­ed the Gov­ern­ment the en­er­gy sec­tor is way too cru­cial to the coun­try's fu­ture to ig­nore the ex­perts who are the re­spos­i­to­ries of in­for­ma­tion on its de­vel­op­ment and man­age­ment. She said: "These are the men and women who un­der­stand the in­dus­try. I sug­gest you find a way to use their ex­per­tise. There is ab­solute­ly no pol­i­tics when it comes to knowl­edge and pro­fes­sion­al­ism. These men and women are act­ing in the best in­ter­est of the na­tion. It is on the backs of these en­er­gy pol­i­cy (mak­ers)that the coun­try con­tin­ues to sur­vive." She paid ku­dos to the late en­er­gy min­is­ter Bar­ry Barnes who con­tributed to "the mon­eti­sa­tion of gas re­serves" and At­lantic LNG's Os­car Pri­eto for their con­tri­bu­tion to the en­er­gy sec­tor. She al­so boast­ed that Rep­sol, British Gas and At­lantic LNG came in­to be­ing un­der the PNM.