T&T is a ma­ture en­er­gy province. Ma­ture means ful­ly grown and ful­ly de­vel­oped. The im­pli­ca­tion is that the prospects for suc­cess­ful ex­plo­ration are now more lim­it­ed. For those un­aware of its mean­ing, there were many signs on dis­play this week. The two most im­por­tant signs were that nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion had fall­en to just un­der two bil­lion cu­bic feet a day (Bcf) and BPTT’s an­nounce­ment of its di­vest­ment of “ma­ture” pro­duc­ing as­sets to Peren­co TT.

Nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion has been falling for the last 14 years since reach­ing a high point of 4.2 bil­lion cu­bic feet. To be fair, it was said that this was due to main­te­nance at dif­fer­ent points in the sys­tem. When the UNC ad­min­is­tra­tion gave this ex­cuse in 2013, it was ridiculed by the PNM op­po­si­tion.

No doubt we will hear sim­i­lar howls of in­creduli­ty from the UNC Op­po­si­tion as well. But the trend of de­clin­ing pro­duc­tion is clear and can­not be de­nied. Ju­niper and An­gelin on­ly pro­vid­ed a short-term breath­ing space of good news and in­creased pro­duc­tion.

As­sum­ing that the out­put lev­el would rep­re­sent a 40 per cent de­cline from the pro­duc­tion high point, all of this has im­pli­ca­tions for the na­tion’s in­dus­tri­al pol­i­cy, growth strat­e­gy, na­tion­al in­come, and gov­ern­ment ex­pen­di­ture. In­creas­ing nat­ur­al gas feed­stock for LNG and the petro­chem­i­cal sec­tor can on­ly come with new finds or new sources of gas, Lo­ran Man­a­tee notwith­stand­ing.

In the mean­time, these plants are op­er­at­ing be­low ca­pac­i­ty. When in 2019 BPTT’s head, Claire Fitz­patrick, in­formed the coun­try that its in-fill drilling pro­gramme had failed, she was dis­missed by the fi­nance min­is­ter as a mere ac­coun­tant who did not know what she was talk­ing about. The com­ment was im­po­lite to say the least.

It al­so served as a warn­ing to po­lit­i­cal loy­al­ists that po­lit­i­cal rhetoric is more of­ten un­re­li­able than re­li­able. Sim­i­lar­ly, al­though Venezuela's gas is im­por­tant, the pub­lic should not raise its ex­pec­ta­tions.

Build­ing a house or ex­pec­ta­tion on shift­ing sand is not a good pol­i­cy. Re­cent bud­get speech­es have tend­ed to be long on rhetoric but short on pol­i­cy ini­tia­tives that will move the eco­nom­ic nee­dle.

The 2024 mid-year bud­get re­view was strange­ly dis­con­nect­ed from the stark re­al­i­ty con­tained in Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert’s af­fi­davit dat­ed June 3 in re­sponse to the Court of Ap­peal mat­ter be­tween Ter­risa Dho­ray and the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al. Per­haps Min­is­ter Im­bert may be forth­right in the 2025 bud­get speech, but that re­mains to be seen.

The sil­ly sea­son is up­on us as the gen­er­al elec­tion is due in the next 12 months. The signs are there for all to see: politi­cians claim­ing cred­it and shift­ing blame, plat­form promis­es abound, each po­lit­i­cal par­ty boast­ing of their per­for­mance and rub­bish­ing the track record of the oth­er side.

Emo­tions will run high as par­ty sup­port­ers tend not to pay much at­ten­tion to facts. Pub­lic protests and com­plaints will be plen­ti­ful as trade unions and oth­ers seek to ex­tract max­i­mum val­ue be­fore the elec­tion.

In the mean­time, vi­o­lent crime con­tin­ues un­abat­ed even as of­fi­cials try to re­as­sure the pub­lic by whistling a mer­ry tune so that no one will sus­pect that they are as afraid as we are.