RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Now that ne­go­ti­a­tions with Niger­ian en­er­gy com­pa­ny Oan­do have been put on hold, Min­is­ter of En­er­gy Dr Roodal Mooni­lal says he is await­ing tech­ni­cal re­ports be­fore tour­ing the Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery, which has been closed since 2018.

Oan­do had been named the pre­ferred bid­der for the re­fin­ery by the last gov­ern­ment.

Speak­ing to re­porters in Debe yes­ter­day, Dr Mooni­lal said: “We are putting to­geth­er a team to do a quick tech­ni­cal as­sess­ment of the state of the re­fin­ery at this minute. We know what the re­fin­ery was in 2018, and cer­tain­ly in 2015. But we would like to get a tech­ni­cal re­port now on the moth­balling process and what is called track­ing re­ports on the re­fin­ery. Then we will be in a po­si­tion to tour."

In a sep­a­rate What­sapp re­sponse to the Guardian, Mooni­lal said the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion is "re­view­ing all trans­ac­tions and ini­tia­tives re the re­fin­ery by the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion. A tech­ni­cal team will first ac­cess the state of the re­fin­ery, then we will move from there."

He al­so re­spond­ed to re­cent com­ments made by the Vice Pres­i­dent of Guyana Bharatt Jagdeo, re­gard­ing T&T's en­er­gy plans and its in­ter­est in re­gion­al col­lab­o­ra­tion.

“The prime min­is­ter has out­lined a vi­sion for Trinidad and To­ba­go be­com­ing an en­er­gy hub of the Caribbean and reemerg­ing as a ma­jor and lead­ing en­er­gy play­er in the Caribbean. It is a vi­sion that we will im­ple­ment that in­volves Suri­name, Grena­da and of course Guyana,” Dr Mooni­lal said.

He ex­plained that T&T's in­ter­est in Guyana ex­tends be­yond nat­ur­al gas.

“They are not as ad­vanced with the pro­duc­tion of gas as they are with oil. So our busi­ness with Guyana has to do with pro­vid­ing tech­ni­cal ser­vice sup­port to the oil in­dus­try, to the en­er­gy in­dus­try there," he said.

He added: “Sev­er­al of our state com­pa­nies are in­volved in Guyana at this time and in­volved in bid­ding for con­tracts to pro­vide ser­vices and so on. Tech­ni­cal, ad­min­is­tra­tive, in some cas­es,” he added.

He not­ed that Guyana’s lim­it­ed gas sup­ply is not like­ly to ben­e­fit T&T at this time.

“No, they don't have the pro­duc­tion of gas at this time that will help us. That is why we’ve had dis­cus­sions over the years and we will now in­ten­si­fy those dis­cus­sions, I imag­ine, af­ter the elec­tion as well in Suri­name, be­cause there is an on­go­ing in­ter­est in a pipeline from Suri­name to Trinidad. That can al­so con­nect to Guyana, if and when Guyana pro­duces the quan­tum of gas that will be for both their do­mes­tic con­sump­tion and for ex­port in the re­gion, pri­mar­i­ly Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

He said there was a mis­un­der­stand­ing about the fea­si­bil­i­ty of a re­gion­al gas pipeline.

“The for­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter is wrong. There is a mod­el to run the pipeline out­side of Venezuela's wa­ters. It is quite com­mon with in­ter­na­tion­al, com­mer­cial arrange­ments and in­ter­na­tion­al law to run a pipeline through oth­er ter­ri­to­r­i­al wa­ters be­long­ing to sev­er­al coun­tries and on land. In fact there are pipelines that run through east­ern Eu­rope, west­ern Eu­rope every­where," he said.

He added: "There is a mod­el for that pipeline out­side of Venezue­lan wa­ters as well. It is some­thing we have on the cards and there is a ma­jor gas sym­po­sium in June to which Trinidad and To­ba­go will have strong rep­re­sen­ta­tion and we in­tend to raise mat­ters of the fuller par­tic­i­pa­tion of the en­er­gy sec­tor from Trinidad in Suri­name.”

Dr Mooni­lal al­so said the pri­vate sec­tor has al­ready built re­la­tion­ships in Guyana and Suri­name, but the gov­ern­ment must now take a more ac­tive role.

"We must al­so have a sig­nif­i­cant pres­ence and I’m hap­py to say that there are state en­ter­pris­es now that we’re work­ing with to get a big­ger role in Suri­name and Guyana in the com­ing months," he added.

Last week, Dr Mooni­lal an­nounced that ne­go­ti­a­tions with Oan­do have been put on hold pend­ing a com­pre­hen­sive re­view.