Lo­cal an­a­lysts are say­ing that the Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing T&T and Guyana signed on Wednes­day presents ben­e­fi­cial op­por­tu­ni­ties to both coun­tries, with Guyana ben­e­fit­ting from this coun­try’s ex­per­tise in the oil and gas sec­tors and T&T in a po­si­tion to make deals with Guyana to im­port oil and gas down the road.

But a for­mer Guyanese min­is­ter is scep­ti­cal, sug­gest­ing that the deal may have been op­por­tunis­tic and is de­mand­ing an­swers from the Prime Min­is­ter on a num­ber of is­sues.

Speak­ing to the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day an­a­lysts In­deera Sagee­wan-Al­li and Win­ford James both agreed it is a good arrange­ment and out­lines an in­tent on the part of both par­ties for co­op­er­a­tion to hap­pen.

James said the MOU “po­ten­tial­ly pro­vides T&T with the op­por­tu­ni­ty to sell its con­sid­er­able ex­per­tise and ex­pe­ri­ence on en­er­gy and en­er­gy-re­lat­ed mat­ters (via, e.g., con­sul­tan­cies, trans­fer of tech­nolo­gies), to make deals with Guyana on (cheap­er) im­por­ta­tion of oil and gas from that coun­try down the road and to make use of un­used ca­pac­i­ty re the re­fine­ment of oil.”

Sagee­wan-Al­li said en­ter­ing in­to this kind of agree­ment with Guyana was ex­treme­ly use­ful.

“The prox­im­i­ty be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go and Guyana, the ex­tent to which Trinidad has ex­pe­ri­ence in the hy­dro­car­bon sec­tor, giv­en what is hap­pen­ing with our own sec­tor in terms of our abil­i­ty to sus­tain it, does def­i­nite­ly mean that Trinidad and To­ba­go has to be look­ing out­side if we want to con­tin­ue to deep­en and ex­pand our sec­tor,” Sagee­wan-Al­li said.

But she said the suc­cess of the MOU de­pends on “how it rolls out in­to ac­tu­al projects, ac­tu­al op­por­tu­ni­ties for co­op­er­a­tion, where we could ac­tu­al­ly see per­son­nel em­ployed in Guyana pro­duc­tive­ly, giv­en the ex­pan­sion and the de­vel­op­ment of the Guyana in­dus­try.”

Al­ready, she said there are voic­es in Guyana which have said that T&T did not treat Guyana very well and “there­fore we don’t think that you are nec­es­sar­i­ly our best al­ly.”

One such voice is for­mer min­is­ter of Nat­ur­al Re­sources and the En­vi­ron­ment Robert Per­saud who, in an open let­ter to Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley post­ed on his Face­book page, point­ed to what he de­scribed as the PM’s “new­ly birthed ex­cite­ment to vis­it Guyana and to par­take in our oil and pros­per­i­ty.”

Per­saud said as some­one who still be­lieves in the po­ten­tial of the Cari­com project, it was “al­ways com­fort­ing when we can iden­ti­fy strengths in each oth­er and de­vel­op syn­er­gis­tic arrange­ments for mu­tu­al ben­e­fits.” It is, he said, a po­si­tion which Guyana has pur­sued “whole-heart­ed­ly and en­thu­si­as­ti­cal­ly” since the dawn of the re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion move­ment.

De­scrib­ing Guyana as the “land of the next re­gion­al en­er­gy gi­ant,” he list­ed sev­en ques­tions the peo­ple of Guyana have been seek­ing an­swers to. These in­clud­ed whether this T&T is com­mit­ted to re­duc­ing the mas­sive trade deficit be­tween Guyana and T&T and when non-tar­iff bar­ri­ers which pre­vent the en­try of Guyana’s agri­cul­tur­al prod­ucts from en­ter­ing the T&T mar­ket will be lift­ed.

Per­saud said there is a view that the T&T mod­el of man­ag­ing oil and gas wealth has proven to be one of the “less in­spir­ing ones across the globe and a mod­el Guyana should not adopt in full.”

James said this view­point is “ok once it does not cloud un­der­stand­ing of po­lit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic re­al­i­ties, prag­mat­ics and im­per­a­tives.”

He said the con­ver­sa­tion in Guyana “needs to weigh moral im­pli­ca­tions against prag­mat­ic eco­nom­ic de­ci­sions.”

He said noth­ing in T&T’s po­si­tion on the Petrotrin re­fin­ery “weak­ens its hand where ad­vis­ing Guyana is con­cerned. It’s up to Guyana to eval­u­ate what­ev­er the ad­vice in its own in­ter­est.”

Sagee­wan-Al­li said there are a lot of ad­van­tages for both par­ties in the arrange­ment.

“There is for ex­am­ple talk of the es­tab­lish­ment of a re­fin­ery, a small re­fin­ery. If that is hap­pen­ing, cer­tain­ly Trinidad and To­ba­go has the ex­per­tise.”

Ad­dress­ing the ques­tion head-on in Guyana on Wednes­day, Row­ley said T&T had done well in the hy­dro­car­bon sec­tor, which had al­lowed de­vel­op­ment in every sec­tor of the coun­try.

“All I can say to Guyana is to un­der­stand that you have a friend in Trinidad and To­ba­go that have a lit­tle bit of ex­pe­ri­ence in this and a hun­dred years may be of some ben­e­fit to you.”

Row­ley made it clear that T&T be­lieves “what is good for Trinidad and To­ba­go in this busi­ness is al­so good for Guyana.”

Guyana Pres­i­dent David Granger al­so re­spond­ed to crit­ics say­ing “Trinidad is bring­ing years of ex­pe­ri­ence in pro­duc­tion, in mar­ket­ing oil and gas, in deal­ing with mul­ti-na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions. The MOU is a means of ben­e­fit­ting from Trinidad’s ad­vice so the fears that there is some give­away are com­plete­ly un­jus­ti­fied.”

Granger de­scribed the MOU as a “win-win sit­u­a­tion for both of us and the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty, it is a sig­nif­i­cant step in mak­ing the com­mu­ni­ty stronger.”