PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER AND

GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Is­rael’s at­tacks on Iran’s nu­clear fa­cil­i­ties yes­ter­day has led to in­creas­es of more than sev­en per cent in the in­ter­na­tion­al price of crude oil.

How­ev­er, this may not sig­nif­i­cant­ly im­pact the lo­cal in­dus­try.

Min­is­ter of En­er­gy Dr Roodal Mooni­lal told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that while the in­ci­dent has pro­voked in­creased prices, T&T may not see the ben­e­fit due to low pro­duc­tion lev­els.

He said one of the main ar­eas of pol­i­cy fo­cus for the Gov­ern­ment is in­creas­ing oil pro­duc­tion.

“There is a lot of po­ten­tial, but we need the in­vest­ments to hap­pen, and this is some­thing that we are ac­tive­ly dis­cussing with all the oil pro­duc­ing com­pa­nies in­clud­ing Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um,” Mooni­lal said.

The flip side to this, he said is that since the last gov­ern­ment shut down the re­fin­ery, T&T is now im­port­ing fu­el in­clud­ing gaso­line and diesel.

“This means Paria will have to pay more for the fu­el it im­ports,” the min­is­ter said, adding that the min­istry would mon­i­tor the sit­u­a­tion as it un­folds in the oil mar­kets.

The need for a fur­ther push from Her­itage was echoed by for­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine.

“It is not go­ing to be any­thing to shout about be­cause our pro­duc­tion of oil, as has been point­ed out by many com­men­ta­tors, is at a low last seen in the 1930s...It (Her­itage) has the great­est po­ten­tial to re­alise that in­crease in pro­duc­tion. But what we have seen is that for many years, we’ve heard many promis­es from Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um ex­ec­u­tives in the past about in­creas­ing oil pro­duc­tion, and we have not seen that ma­te­ri­alise.

“So I think that cen­tral to the mis­sion of in­creas­ing oil pro­duc­tion in Trinidad and To­ba­go is how Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um gets its act to­geth­er in the years to come,” Ram­nar­ine said.

En­er­gy ex­pert Gre­go­ry McGuire al­so not­ed the low­er price point, stat­ing that the 2024/2025 bud­get had been tied to a high­er es­ti­mat­ed price.

“Our bud­get­ed oil price for the cur­rent fis­cal year was US $77. There­fore, the lat­est in­crease may just about cor­rect for low­er prices ear­li­er in the year, mean­ing that it is un­like­ly to have any ma­jor im­pact on the planned fis­cal deficit,” he said.

How­ev­er, McGuire ad­vised that as a na­tion T&T needs to keep its fo­cus on meet­ing the di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion chal­lenge rather than “get­ting ex­cit­ed about any and every pos­i­tive de­vel­op­ment in the en­er­gy space.”

“Let us not be side­tracked by these ran­dom ex­ter­nal shocks,” he fur­ther sug­gest­ed.

The en­er­gy ex­pert fur­ther not­ed that any flare up of hos­til­i­ties in the Mid­dle East al­ways caus­es anx­i­eties in the oil mar­kets.

There­fore, he said it was no sur­prise that there has been a short-term, glob­al spike in prices. How­ev­er, whether this would re­sult in ma­te­r­i­al ben­e­fits to T&T re­al­ly de­pends on sev­er­al fac­tors. These in­clude how long geopo­lit­i­cal ten­sions per­sist and would it es­ca­late to oth­er ar­eas par­tic­u­lar­ly the oil pro­duc­ing re­gions.