PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

For­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine is warn­ing that T&T’s rev­enues may de­crease in the com­ing months as en­er­gy prices are on the de­cline due to eas­ing ten­sions in the Mid­dle East.

In­ter­na­tion­al re­ports state 12 mil­lion bar­rels passed through the Strait of Hor­muz yes­ter­day, one day af­ter US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump signed ​a deal on Wednes­day ​with his Iran­ian coun­ter­part, Ma­soud Pezeshkian, to end the ​war in the Mid­dle East.

Iran must al­low ships to tran­sit the Strait of Hor­muz with­out pay­ing tolls for 60 days, while the US is sup­posed to lift its naval block­ade as part of the deal.

“All the ar­rows on the tick­er are red. Oil is head­ed to the low 70s. So, West Texas In­ter­me­di­ate is US$74.44 right now and Brent is US$77.70. You know, you can ex­pect them to go in­to the 60s in a cou­ple of days. So, every­thing is go­ing to go back to where it was be­fore the com­mence­ment of the war. So, we’re look­ing at prices, I would think, in the 60s, pos­si­bly the high 50s,” said Ram­nar­ine.

On Mon­day, dur­ing his mid-year bud­get re­view pre­sen­ta­tion, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo re­vised the es­ti­mat­ed oil price up­ward to US$85 per bar­rel to the end of the fis­cal year.

Ram­nar­ine ac­knowl­edged that the gov­ern­ment had ben­e­fit­ed from the price in­crease caused by the con­flict.

"The last bud­get was based on an oil price of, I think it was US$73.25 and a nat­ur­al gas price of US$4.25 per mmb­tu. So, prices have, since then, ex­pe­ri­enced an up­lift. In the first quar­ter of that fis­cal year, that’s Oc­to­ber 1, 2025, to De­cem­ber 31, 2025, it av­er­aged US$62 per bar­rel,” he said, “And then in the sec­ond quar­ter, it went up to IS$77.64. So, that sec­ond quar­ter would be Jan­u­ary 1st, 2026, to March 31, 2026. And in the March part of that quar­ter, you would have had high prices. If we were to look at the third quar­ter of the fis­cal year, which would be April 1st, 2026, to June 30, 2026, for that quar­ter, that third quar­ter, you would prob­a­bly see prices in the 90s or close to the 100s, right? But it’s go­ing to ob­vi­ous­ly come down now.”

He con­tin­ued, “Oil prices cor­re­late pos­i­tive­ly with nat­ur­al gas prices and cor­re­late pos­i­tive­ly with am­mo­nia and methanol prices. So, as oil prices come down, nat­ur­al gas prices come down, methanol prices come down, and am­mo­nia prices come down. And all these things af­fect Point Lisas. It af­fects NGC. So, there’s a rip­ple ef­fect. And we’ve been in a chal­leng­ing en­vi­ron­ment for a while in this coun­try in terms of rev­enue.”

The for­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter, how­ev­er, said it is not all gloomy for T&T as he had ex­pect­ed 2026 to be a dol­drum year for the coun­try. He, how­ev­er, ex­pect­ed a turn­around by late 2027 as sev­er­al projects, in­clud­ing Man­a­tee, come on­stream and boost gas pro­duc­tion.

He, how­ev­er, warned that T&T must be wary of the chang­ing land­scape of glob­al en­er­gy.

Ram­nar­ine said, “The glob­al en­er­gy sys­tem is in sig­nif­i­cant tran­si­tion. The elec­tric ve­hi­cle is tak­ing root glob­al­ly. We see it in Trinidad now, where every­where you turn, you see elec­tric cars. That is not go­ing to go back­ward. That is on­ly go­ing to go for­ward, mean­ing that there will be more elec­tric cars in years to come. So we have to, as a coun­try, know where we are and re­al­ly plan prop­er­ly and se­ri­ous­ly for the fu­ture.”