In four days, the En­er­gy Cham­ber of T&T will host one of its most im­por­tant en­er­gy con­fer­ences.

You see, the con­fer­ence is com­ing at a time of great in­ter­na­tion­al change, with en­er­gy com­pa­nies be­ing pres­sured to move to­wards net-ze­ro car­bon emis­sions as soon as pos­si­ble but no lat­er than by 2050.

Last week saw the world’s largest oil and gas com­pa­ny, Exxon Mo­bil, in a mon­u­men­tal fight that re­sult­ed in two of its di­rec­tors los­ing their seats on the 12-mem­ber board and be­ing re­placed by sup­port­ers of those who felt the com­pa­ny need­ed to cut spend­ing, boost re­turns and pre­pare for a low­er-car­bon fu­ture.

Exxon has been the least en­thu­si­as­tic of the ma­jors on the move to re­new­ables. The com­pa­ny has in the past ar­gued that the tech­nol­o­gy would emerge that would al­low for the con­tin­ued use of fos­sil fu­els while, at the same time, pro­tect­ing the plan­et from glob­al warm­ing.

Try­ing to stave off the crit­i­cism em­a­nat­ing from those who saw the com­pa­ny as not be­ing suf­fi­cient­ly proac­tive in the fight against cli­mate change, Exxon Mo­bil in March pro­posed an am­bi­tious and ex­pen­sive plan to re­duce its car­bon foot­print.

The plan it out­lined was to fo­cus ini­tial­ly on car­bon cap­ture and stor­age, as well as hy­dro­gen pro­duc­tion and oth­er low­er-car­bon op­por­tu­ni­ties.

Oth­er ar­eas of the plan in­clud­ed:

1. Lever­ag­ing Exxon­Mo­bil’s ex­pe­ri­ence and ca­pa­bil­i­ties

2. Pro­mot­ing sup­port­ive poli­cies and reg­u­la­to­ry frame­works

3. Es­tab­lish­ing part­ner­ships and coali­tions

4. In­vest­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly $3 bil­lion on low­er-emis­sion en­er­gy so­lu­tions through 2025, adding to the more than $10 bil­lion Exxon­Mo­bil in­vest­ed since 2000.

The plans were not enough for what ap­pears to be not just grow­ing pub­lic opin­ion but emerg­ing con­sen­sus that fos­sil fu­el had to be sharply re­duced, and the pow­er of in­sti­tu­tions and gov­ern­ments will be brought to bear on this is­sue.

If we are to be­lieve the Vice Pres­i­dent of Nige­ria, al­ready, the Eu­ro­pean Union and the British have in­struct­ed their de­vel­op­men­tal agen­cies not to lend any mon­ey for new fos­sil fu­el projects.

BP PLC’s pres­i­dent Bernard Looney re­cent­ly told the Co­lum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty’s Glob­al Sum­mit that the world has a car­bon bud­get and it is run­ning out. He ex­plained that so­ci­ety and many of BP’s em­ploy­ees want the com­pa­ny to change and he be­lieves there is an enor­mous busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ty from re­new­ables.

“And I’ve al­ways be­lieved that you can’t be a long-term suc­cess­ful com­pa­ny if you’re go­ing against the grain of so­ci­ety. I was talk­ing to some­one re­cent­ly and he says, you can’t de­fy grav­i­ty. And in some ways, that’s how it feels at the mo­ment.

“And in the third rea­son that we must change is that I think it’s an enor­mous busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ty and tril­lions of dol­lars are go­ing to get rewiring and re-plumb­ing, the Earth’s en­er­gy sys­tem. It’s a hard prob­lem to solve, it’s com­plex and quite frankly, we love that, we love that com­plex­i­ty be­cause, in many ways, it is what we’re built for. So, on the one hand, we have to change, be­cause if you don’t, you get left be­hind by so­ci­ety,” Looney told the con­fer­ence.

Mean­while, BP, the par­ent com­pa­ny of this coun­try’s largest nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­er, has al­ready slashed its ex­plo­ration bud­get, in­di­cat­ed an in­tent to sell many of its fos­sil fu­el as­sets and got­ten in­to re­new­able projects and part­ner­ships, in­clud­ing with com­pa­nies like Ce­mex, the par­ent com­pa­ny of TCL, as it moves to tran­si­tion in­to an in­te­grat­ed en­er­gy com­pa­ny with a large and com­pelling re­new­able en­er­gy port­fo­lio.

This is the new world that T&T finds it­self in and there is no turn­ing back.

Since 1973, fol­low­ing the first oil price shock and which was fur­ther en­hanced in 1979, along with the dis­cov­ery of bil­lion-bar­rel fields TSP off the cost of Guayagua­yare, T&T’s eco­nom­ic for­tune has been di­rect­ly linked by oil prices and lat­er on by oil and gas prices and pro­duc­tion.

The longest pe­ri­od of pros­per­i­ty this coun­try has seen, 1996 to 2014, was dri­ven by oil and gas (LNG) prices and pro­duc­tion and petro­chem­i­cals.

It is the forex from the sec­tor that has al­lowed us to sup­port our taste for for­eign goods. It is the forex that has al­lowed us to pay for the im­por­ta­tion of goods and ser­vices and made us build up some of­fi­cial re­serves that to­day still pro­vide some buffers for our econ­o­my.

It is the rev­enue from the en­er­gy sec­tor that sup­ports the on­shore sec­tor and gov­ern­ment spend­ing and in some ways, it is the rev­enue from the en­er­gy sec­tor that has al­lowed us to main­tain the lev­el of waste and mis­man­age­ment while not as yet pay­ing the ul­ti­mate price.

Next week’s En­er­gy Con­fer­ence will al­low us to hear first-hand from the ma­jors of the way their com­pa­nies see the fu­ture in the T&T con­text.

While I am clear in my mind that the days of mas­sive use of fos­sil fu­el is com­ing to an end, it does not mean as a coun­try we should aban­don the en­er­gy sec­tor. Far from it. This is a time to move quick­ly to fix the prob­lems in the sec­tor.

We have to fo­cus on is­sues of the com­pet­i­tive­ness and sus­tain­abil­i­ty of the sec­tor. We have to fig­ure out a new mod­el for the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate that en­sures we can com­pete with the low-priced nat­ur­al gas en­vi­ron­ment by hav­ing nat­ur­al gas at a com­pet­i­tive price and at the same time ex­plor­ing new op­por­tu­ni­ties for green am­mo­nia and methanol.

The Gov­ern­ment, through the NGC, must see it­self as a part­ner with the down­stream sec­tor, look­ing for so­lu­tions and recog­nis­ing that times have changed and every­one los­es when plants are shut down be­cause they sim­ply can­not com­pete on the glob­al scale.

The Gov­ern­ment has to tell us what is the fu­ture of At­lantic LNG Train 1 and we have to re­form the fis­cal mea­sures to en­sure more sub-sur­face in­vest­ments. Oil and gas in the ground ben­e­fits no one.

New­ly-mint­ed Min­is­ter of En­er­gy Stu­art Young has promised that the new bid round will take place on time. He has to keep his promise!

In fix­ing the en­er­gy sec­tor, we must fix our coun­try. We have to learn to do more with less. I don’t mean that we have to get ac­cus­tomed to less rev­enue be­cause I am con­fi­dent that if we do a num­ber of things, start­ing with a rev­enue au­thor­i­ty and with the projects al­ready on stream, we will see a boost in rev­enue in the 2023/24 pe­ri­od.

What we have to do ur­gent­ly is to en­sure we are get­ting val­ue for mon­ey and that we are col­lect­ing all that is due to the state.

We have to re­move the re­al stum­bling blocks to do­ing busi­ness in this coun­try and we have to have a gov­ern­ment that cre­ates a more en­abling en­vi­ron­ment.

Let us be clear, the Gov­ern­ment’s stran­gle­hold on the econ­o­my is not good for the coun­try and it will lead us down the road to perdi­tion.

The time has changed. T&T as a small open econ­o­my will fail if it does not in­no­vate and is not com­pet­i­tive in every­thing it does, start­ing with the en­er­gy sec­tor.

It is David Rud­der in his song Ral­ly Round the West In­dies— which has now be­come the ba­sis for the West In­dies crick­et team’s an­them—who warned the re­gion that we as a peo­ple were no longer need­ed to be the pawns in the in­ter­na­tion­al cold war games and were like­ly to be even less im­por­tant than we were be­fore.

“Soon we must take a side or be lost in the rub­ble. In a di­vid­ed world that don’t need is­lands no more. Are we doomed to be at some­body’s mer­cy? Lit­tle keys can open mighty doors,” Rud­der not­ed.

For Rud­der, Caribbean uni­ty would be key go­ing for­ward be­cause as the Ja­maicans say, you might be small but you tallawah.

We are in­creas­ing­ly in a world that will not need hy­dro­car­bons any­more. At least not in its large quan­ti­ty.

T&T has to be bold and smart and fi­nal­ly see that it can­not con­tin­ue the way it is go­ing.

The winds of change are blow­ing. We don’t stand a chance against it.