Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

The Ju­bilee oil find off Trinidad's south-west­ern coast an­nounced by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar last week, may be "the tip of the ice­berg". This is be­cause light crude is be­lieved to be part of a mi­grat­ing oil track from the Orinoco Oil Belt.

So said PNM La Brea MP Fitzger­ald Jef­frey in re­sponse to ques­tions about a Unit­ed States Ge­o­log­i­cal Sur­vey re­port which es­ti­mates that 513 bil­lion bar­rels of tech­ni­cal­ly re­cov­er­able heavy oil ex­ists in the Orinoco Oil Belt. The re­port ob­tained ex­clu­sive­ly by the T&T Guardian, showed that the oil mi­grates north­wards (to­wards Trinidad) from a deep­er basin to the shal­low south­ern basin plat­form form­ing the Orinoco Oil Belt.

Es­ti­mates of the oil re­source were based on work done by a team of US ge­ol­o­gists along the East Venezue­lan Basin Province, iden­ti­fied as one of the world's largest re­cov­er­able oil ac­cu­mu­la­tions. The re­port was pub­lished in Oc­to­ber 2009. It stat­ed that the ac­tu­al oil vol­ume is 513 bil­lion bar­rels and prob­a­ble vol­umes could be in ex­cess of one tril­lion bar­rels.

Jef­frey said he knew of the US ge­o­log­i­cal sur­vey when the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment was in of­fice, but for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning felt it was not cost-ef­fec­tive to pur­sue deep-sea oil ex­plo­ration. Jef­frey ex­plained while the oil may ex­ist, it is cost­ly to drill.

"We felt di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of the econ­o­my was bet­ter. Even though we heard of this vast oil ac­cu­mu­la­tion, it was risky busi­ness. The prob­lem in T&T has to do with ge­ol­o­gy. A lot of the oil is found in tracks and that is what makes the find­ing of oil dif­fi­cult," Jef­frey said.

He said in places like Sau­di Ara­bia, oil de­posits can be ex­tract­ed eas­i­ly. "In Trinidad, be­cause of the ge­o­log­i­cal faults in the south­ern basin, oil ex­plo­ration is ex­pen­sive and risky be­cause of mi­gra­tion. I think there is more oil and gas to be found but one of the prob­lems is that the good crude tends to be more in the ma­rine en­vi­ron­ment and we have to go in deep­er hori­zons to get that crude. With the cost of oil per bar­rel, it is not fea­si­ble to go in­to the deep," Jef­frey said.

He said the PNM felt it made bet­ter sense to di­ver­si­fy in­to plas­tics and alu­mini­um. "We have to get away from the pe­tro­le­um in­dus­try and di­ver­si­fy. I found it un­for­tu­nate that they moved away from the smelter," Jef­frey said. Pres­i­dent of the Granville Com­mu­ni­ty Coun­cil, Shankar Teeluchs­ingh said the PNM had tried to de­ny T&T ac­cess to the oil rich­es of the Orinoco. Teeluchs­ingh said draw­ings of the Al­coa Smelter Plant showed drilling fields in the Trin­mar Sol­da­do East field-where light crude was found-was slat­ed for re­moval to fa­cil­i­tate the Al­coa port.

He said Venezuela was cap­i­tal­is­ing on this vast oil re­serve and the US is now look­ing to in­vest in Venezuela's oil in­dus­try.