PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

For­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine does not be­lieve that Trinidad and To­ba­go’s en­er­gy sec­tor will crum­ble if it does not get gas from Venezuela.

In a re­cent in­ter­view on The Morn­ing Brew, the for­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter ex­pressed con­fi­dence that oth­er gas re­serves in T&T’s wa­ters could main­tain the sec­tor.

“I am of the view, and peo­ple may choose to dis­agree with me, which is some­thing that we do in democ­ra­cies, that if we don’t get gas from Venezuela, it is not the end of the world for Trinidad. I am of the view that there still re­sides with­in our ge­og­ra­phy, with­in our ge­ol­o­gy, sig­nif­i­cant re­serves of nat­ur­al gas which we have yet to dis­cov­er, or which have been dis­cov­ered and have to be de­vel­oped,” said Ram­nar­ine, “And I think that if we, if we’ve dou­bled down and we fo­cus on de­vel­op­ing our own re­sources and re­serves, then it’s not the end of the world, and our nat­ur­al gas sec­tor will con­tin­ue to move for­ward.”

Ram­nar­ine point­ed to the deal signed by the Gov­ern­ment with Amer­i­can multi­na­tion­al oil and gas cor­po­ra­tion Exxon­mo­bil in Au­gust as an in­di­ca­tor that there were oth­er op­tions avail­able.

“The sign­ing in Au­gust by Exxon­Mo­bil of acreage in the ul­tra-deep wa­ter, and that is a po­ten­tial project which could po­ten­tial­ly bear fruit. We have new projects com­ing on stream in the next 18 months to two years. Name­ly, the Co­conut project, the Gin­ger project, the (Shell) Cypre project is cur­rent­ly (on­go­ing). Cypre phase two is cur­rent­ly be­ing put on­line. So, so there are re­sources. I mean, if we get gas from Venezuela, great, but if we don’t get gas from Venezuela, it’s not the end of the world for Trinidad and To­ba­go,” said Ram­nar­ine, who not­ed that for­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley cor­rect­ly point­ed out that Man­a­tee, which sits in T&T wa­ters, al­so is a nat­ur­al gas field.

He stressed that Trinidad and To­ba­go has had a suc­cess­ful oil and gas in­dus­try for over a cen­tu­ry with­out Venezuela’s in­volve­ment.

Ram­nar­ine al­so ac­knowl­edged that some of Row­ley’s con­cerns that any sig­nif­i­cant con­flict be­tween the US and Venezuela could neg­a­tive­ly im­pact T&T were war­rant­ed giv­en this coun­try’s prox­im­i­ty to the South Amer­i­can state. He ex­pressed sup­port for Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s state­ment that T&T was not be­ing used as a base by the US for any ac­tion against Venezuela.

Ram­nar­ine said based on the time­line for most on­stream projects, T&T could see an im­prove­ment in nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion by 2027.