The ar­ti­cle from the En­er­gy Cham­ber on Au­gust 2, Busi­ness Guardian on hy­dro­car­bon re­serves was in­ter­est­ing but cer­tain­ly did not dis­pel pub­lic un­ease about the re­serves po­si­tion in Trinidad and To­ba­go. If any­thing I dare­say it left most read­ers with the im­pres­sion that every­thing is so un­cer­tain that no re­ports can be re­lied up­on to give an idea about the fu­ture of our oil and gas pro­duc­tion.

I would par­tic­u­lar­ly chal­lenge the re­marks about the "3rd mis­con­cep­tion" that "Our re­serves po­si­tion is a cause for pan­ic". We have to use the in­for­ma­tion avail­able to us, and con­sid­er­ing that Ry­der Scott has been con­tract­ed for many years to pro­duce the re­serves re­port to the gov­ern­ment of T&T we must as­sume that the re­port is as good as can be ex­pect­ed. All this in­di­cates that we will al­most cer­tain­ly 'run out of gas'.

This will not be like a valve be­ing sud­den­ly turned off. It will be a grad­ual process in which the pro­duc­ers will be un­able to de­liv­er the quan­ti­ties of gas re­quired by the LNG, am­mo­nia and methanol plants, far less the new AUM plants and what­ev­er else the Min­is­ter thinks he can sup­ply. It is in­ter­est­ing to note that through­out 2011 and thus far in­to 2012 these plants are al­ready starved for gas.

I sug­gest that read­ers dis­re­gard the com­ments about the "3rd mis­con­cep­tion" and de­mand that our gov­ern­ment start be­ing hon­est with us and com­mence some se­ri­ous sen­si­ble plan­ning for a less gas-rich fu­ture.

Reg Pot­ter Glen­coe

Glen­coe