An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

The En­er­gy Cham­ber is call­ing for a re­newed na­tion­al fo­cus on se­cur­ing and ex­pand­ing do­mes­tic nat­ur­al gas sup­plies, fol­low­ing Venezuela’s de­ci­sion to sus­pend en­er­gy sec­tor agree­ments with Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The move by Cara­cas comes af­ter Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro sus­pend­ed the 2015 En­er­gy Co­op­er­a­tion Frame­work Agree­ment, which al­lowed for joint gas de­vel­op­ment across the two coun­tries’ shared mar­itime bor­ders.

Vice Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­dríguez made the rec­om­men­da­tion to Maduro af­ter ac­cus­ing T&T of at­tempt­ing to pro­voke con­flict with the ar­rival of the USS Grave­ly war­ship in Port-of-Spain and al­leged col­lab­o­ra­tion with the CIA.

Maduro an­nounced the sus­pen­sion on Mon­day evening.

In re­sponse, the En­er­gy Cham­ber yes­ter­day stressed the strate­gic im­por­tance of pri­ori­tis­ing do­mes­tic gas pro­duc­tion to safe­guard eco­nom­ic sta­bil­i­ty, en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty, and na­tion­al in­ter­ests.

The cham­ber high­light­ed that T&T’s petro­chem­i­cal sec­tor in Point Lisas and La Brea, along with the LNG fa­cil­i­ty in Point Fortin, re­lies heav­i­ly on un­in­ter­rupt­ed gas sup­plies.

It not­ed that strength­en­ing en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty will re­quire en­hanced re­cov­ery from ex­ist­ing gas fields al­ready in pro­duc­tion, as well as the de­vel­op­ment of new fields in shal­low and deep­wa­ter ar­eas with­in T&T’s ex­clu­sive eco­nom­ic zone.

The cham­ber al­so un­der­scored the po­ten­tial of cross-bor­der fields that strad­dle mar­itime bound­aries with Venezuela, Grena­da, and Bar­ba­dos, along­side pipeline im­ports from neigh­bour­ing coun­tries where geopo­lit­i­cal­ly fea­si­ble.

While ac­knowl­edg­ing the short-term chal­lenges posed by Venezuela’s ac­tion, the cham­ber em­pha­sised that the sit­u­a­tion un­der­scores the need to ac­cel­er­ate poli­cies and in­vest­ments that un­lock do­mes­tic and re­gion­al gas re­sources.

“The cur­rent geopo­lit­i­cal de­vel­op­ments high­light the ur­gency of re­in­forc­ing our en­er­gy in­de­pen­dence,” the cham­ber said.

“We must pri­ori­tise do­mes­tic pro­duc­tion, di­ver­si­fy sup­ply sources, and strength­en part­ner­ships with­in the re­gion to en­sure en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty for our in­dus­tries and cit­i­zens.”

The En­er­gy Cham­ber al­so re­it­er­at­ed its com­mit­ment to work­ing close­ly with the Gov­ern­ment and in­dus­try stake­hold­ers to im­ple­ment a for­ward-look­ing en­er­gy strat­e­gy that aligns with na­tion­al pri­or­i­ties. Such a strat­e­gy, the cham­ber said, is es­sen­tial to sus­tain­ing the com­pet­i­tive­ness of T&T’s en­er­gy-in­ten­sive in­dus­tries, pro­tect­ing jobs, and se­cur­ing a pros­per­ous fu­ture for all cit­i­zens.

“In light of ris­ing re­gion­al ten­sions, the cham­ber is urg­ing that do­mes­tic gas pro­duc­tion and en­er­gy re­silience be­come top pri­or­i­ties in na­tion­al plan­ning, with swift ac­tion re­quired to safe­guard the coun­try’s fu­ture.”