Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries Ernesto Ke­sar says he hopes to see a 100 per cent in­crease in oil and gas sec­tor jobs by next year, and he is urg­ing en­er­gy com­pa­nies to part­ner with trade schools to pro­duce cer­ti­fied pro­fes­sion­als.

Ke­sar spoke at the sign­ing of a Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing be­tween the Na­tion­al En­er­gy Skills Cen­tre (NESC) and Caribbean Well Ser­vices at the cen­tre’s Drilling Acad­e­my in Ste Madeleine last Wednes­day.

The part­ner­ship seeks to de­vel­op a spe­cial­ist train­ing pro­gramme to build man­pow­er for the drilling in­dus­try through on-the-job train­ing.

High­light­ing the sec­tor’s role in em­ploy­ment, Ke­sar said the en­er­gy in­dus­try con­tin­ued to pro­vide a vi­able path­way to op­por­tu­ni­ties for young peo­ple. He not­ed that the first quar­ter of 2025 showed an av­er­age of 12,800 peo­ple em­ployed in oil and gas, ac­count­ing for 2.3 per cent of the na­tion­al labour force.

“As our Gov­ern­ment aims to re­store Trinidad and To­ba­go to be the en­er­gy hub of the Caribbean, we aim to cre­ate em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties for our cit­i­zens as well, and with a keen fo­cus on youth de­vel­op­ment. And as I al­ways say, what gets mea­sured gets done. So 2.3 per cent, we want to in­crease that by, maybe, 100 per cent come next year,” Ke­sar said.

He added that the in­dus­try would soon ex­pe­ri­ence a “chang­ing of the guard” as many pro­fes­sion­als re­tire, and younger work­ers take up more jobs. For this rea­son, he called on en­er­gy com­pa­nies to col­lab­o­rate with in­sti­tu­tions such as NESC to en­sure cer­ti­fied pro­fes­sion­als con­tin­ue to en­ter the in­dus­try.

Ke­sar, a for­mer trade union­ist, al­so stressed the im­por­tance of sus­tain­able em­ploy­ment in the sec­tor. Point­ing to the in­dus­try’s sig­nif­i­cance, he said oil and gas ac­count for 45 per cent of GDP, yet many skilled and qual­i­fied pro­fes­sion­als are still placed on short-term con­tracts.

Asked whether he had ex­am­ined the labour sup­ply con­tract be­tween the Ken­son Group and Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny, as well as Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny Ltd, Ke­sar said it was a mat­ter for the board of those com­pa­nies to ad­dress, not the min­is­ter. How­ev­er, he main­tained that cit­i­zens must be treat­ed with re­spect and re­turned to sta­ble and sus­tain­able em­ploy­ment. He said he does not sup­port three- or six-month con­tracts in oil and gas, de­scrib­ing them as un­just labour prac­tices.

“I am call­ing on all en­er­gy-based com­pa­nies now, par­tic­u­lar­ly our na­tion­al com­pa­nies, Her­itage, Paria, and so on, as man­age­ment peo­ple look at that whole sit­u­a­tion that they move to come more in line with what the law states: the laws of Trinidad and the labour laws, and look­ing at mak­ing sure that cit­i­zens are re­turned to some sort of sta­bil­i­ty.”

Re­flect­ing on wider in­dus­try trends, Ke­sar said the last sev­en to ten years had seen un­der­em­ploy­ment in the sec­tor, with work­ers re­ly­ing on short con­tracts, even though glob­al­ly the in­dus­try con­tin­ues to pro­vide sus­tain­able jobs. Draw­ing on his 25 years of ex­pe­ri­ence in oil and gas, he said he and the min­istry were com­mit­ted to restor­ing sta­bil­i­ty through ap­pren­tice­ships, long-term con­tracts, and per­ma­nent po­si­tions.

Fo­cus­ing on Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um, Ke­sar not­ed that its work­force is cur­rent­ly a mix of per­ma­nent and con­tract work­ers, some on three-month, six-month, or one-year terms. He said the min­istry’s ob­jec­tive for the com­ing year was to change this struc­ture, sig­nalling a stronger com­mit­ment to sta­ble em­ploy­ment at Her­itage and reaf­firm­ing the Gov­ern­ment’s dri­ve to re­turn Trinidad and To­ba­go to its place as the Caribbean’s en­er­gy hub.

“Some of the peo­ple who are be­ing em­ployed are skilled and high­ly qual­i­fied pro­fes­sion­als. I mean, it is very, very dis­heart­en­ing when you have spent all your life in an in­dus­try and be­cause of some po­lit­i­cal de­ci­sion, you now have to re­duce your whole ca­reer to a three-month or six-month con­tract.”

Ke­sar al­so point­ed out that the Na­tion­al Ap­pren­tice­ship Pol­i­cy had been com­plet­ed years ago but was nev­er ful­ly im­ple­ment­ed. While it was in­tro­duced un­der the pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment, he ques­tioned why it was aban­doned, not­ing that it made sense. He said his Gov­ern­ment would im­ple­ment it to ush­er young peo­ple in­to jobs af­ter an ap­pren­tice­ship, un­like the On-the-Job Train­ing Pro­gramme, where many par­tic­i­pants did not se­cure em­ploy­ment af­ter com­plet­ing the scheme.