Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

As Trinidad and To­ba­go ag­gres­sive­ly push­es to re­verse its de­clin­ing hy­dro­car­bon out­put through new off­shore fron­tiers and cross-bor­der gas deals, a sober­ing glob­al re­port has cast a light on the en­vi­ron­men­tal cost of this re­vival.

The 2026 Earth In­sight re­port, Fos­sil Fu­el Threats to the Ocean, re­leased on May 27, re­vealed T&T’s ex­pand­ing en­er­gy foot­print places “100 per cent” of its coral reefs di­rect­ly with­in oil and gas zones.

It comes af­ter tens of thou­sands of square kilo­me­ters of eco­log­i­cal­ly sen­si­tive wa­ters were opened up to ex­plo­ration by the Gov­ern­ment in Jan­u­ary 2025. The most re­cent ma­jor en­er­gy auc­tion, the Deep Wa­ter Com­pet­i­tive Bid­ding Round 2025, of­fered 26 off­shore blocks but re­sult­ed in on­ly four bids when it closed last Sep­tem­ber.

The re­port ex­am­ines a new wave of planned oil, gas and liq­ue­fied nat­ur­al gas (LNG) ex­pan­sion in coastal and off­shore re­gions around the world. T&T is one of 11 case stud­ies, where sig­nif­i­cant fos­sil fu­el in­vest­ment plans are mov­ing for­ward or be­ing ac­tive­ly pro­mot­ed. These in­clude new LNG ex­port projects in Ar­genti­na, Alas­ka, Mex­i­co and Tan­za­nia, and ex­pand­ed off­shore li­cens­ing in Aus­tralia, Cameroon, In­done­sia, Ja­maica, Kenya and Nor­way.

Ex­plor­ing at an eco­log­i­cal ex­pense

Ac­cord­ing to the re­port, every sin­gle coral reef in the re­gion falls di­rect­ly with­in des­ig­nat­ed oil and gas risk zones. Tyson Miller, ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of En­er­gy In­sights, which pro­duced the re­port, backed his team’s method­ol­o­gy and ul­ti­mate as­sess­ment of the im­pact on coral reefs around T&T.

In an in­ter­view last month, Miller said, “From our per­spec­tive, and we use citable sources to de­vel­op our method­ol­o­gy, but es­sen­tial­ly the 100-kilo­me­tre dis­tance cre­at­ed a buffer zone, and it showed that oil spills can trav­el over 100 kilo­me­tres, so we land­ed on that fig­ure as some­what con­ser­v­a­tive. Oil and gas risk zones are not an in­dus­try or in­ter­na­tion­al­ly de­fined method­ol­o­gy, but what we did was we looked at what’s the dis­tance of trav­el from spills and how might that im­pact coral, sea­grass­es, man­groves, and oth­er vi­tal habi­tat.

“So that’s how we kind of de­ter­mined it. We did use geospa­tial analy­sis to ex­am­ine di­rect over­laps, and then we use the risk zone to quan­ti­fy the threat from spills, oth­er events from the sur­round­ing off­shore blocks if they get de­vel­oped, so it’s a new method­ol­o­gy.”

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the re­port re­veals the blocks of­fered in last year’s bid rounds over­lap 45 per cent of the re­gion’s Eco­log­i­cal­ly or Bi­o­log­i­cal­ly Sig­nif­i­cant Ma­rine Ar­eas (EB­SAs). This equals 28,700 square kilo­me­tres (an area rough­ly ten times the phys­i­cal size of T&T it­self). The 2025 bid round blocks al­so over­lap 3,400 square kilo­me­tres of the West In­dies Hump­back Whale Breed­ing Ground IM­MA. This con­sti­tutes a 20 per cent di­rect over­lap of a crit­i­cal shal­low-wa­ter habi­tat used by more than 20 ma­rine mam­mal species, in­clud­ing the North At­lantic hump­back whale.

The ex­pand­ing en­er­gy foot­print, the re­port stat­ed, di­rect­ly pres­sures lo­cal eco-tourism and ar­ti­sanal fish­ing in­dus­tries, in­clud­ing vul­ner­a­ble fish­ing towns in­clud­ing Ce­dros, Ica­cos, Moru­ga, and Ma­yaro. In To­ba­go, com­mu­ni­ties like Cas­tara, Buc­coo, Bon Ac­cord, and Black Rock face se­vere ex­po­sure to po­ten­tial seis­mic sur­vey dis­rup­tions and in­fra­struc­ture pol­lu­tion. The re­port al­so not­ed that lo­cal anx­i­eties are heav­i­ly com­pound­ed by the 2024 oil spill caused by a cap­sized ship, which dev­as­tat­ed To­ba­go’s coast­line and trig­gered mas­sive eco­nom­ic loss­es for fish­ers and tourism.

The Gov­ern­men­tal dilem­ma

En­er­gy ex­pert, Tony Paul, weighed in on the re­port in an in­ter­view with the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian. He said the en­er­gy com­pa­nies op­er­at­ing off­shore have an oblig­a­tion to fac­tor in the en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pacts, but the process is wrapped in a blan­ket of con­fi­den­tial­i­ty.

Paul stat­ed, “When com­pa­nies do pipelines, they have to do some­thing called meto­cean stud­ies, un­der­stand the cur­rents, the tides of depth, and so on. They have to do it when they’re do­ing en­gine safe­ty, en­vi­ron­men­tal per­mit­ting, they have to do that as well. Those go in­to the pub­lic do­main. Oth­er da­ta, over time, don’t. If we want to study the en­vi­ron­ment, we have to have da­ta. We col­lect da­ta, but it’s not ac­ces­si­ble. Why? Be­cause the min­istry throws it un­der a blan­ket con­fi­den­tial­i­ty agree­ment. It doesn’t af­fect what the com­pa­ny’s in­ter­est­ed in at all, but the min­istry isn’t thought­ful or isn’t pushed to make it.”

When asked whether the Min­istry of En­er­gy down the years has been less in­clined to care about the en­vi­ron­ment and more in­clined to care about the roy­al­ties de­rived from oil and gas, Paul fur­ther stat­ed, “Some peo­ple do care in some min­istries. Pro­fes­sion­als do. To run a min­istry, you need the mod­ern peo­ple. You need process. You need reg­u­la­tions. You need ac­count­abil­i­ty. You need trans­paren­cy. There’s a say­ing; trust but val­i­date. I have good tech­nocrats who want to do the right thing. I want to trust them, but I need to know that they’re do­ing the right thing. How do I know that? I need to know what the rules are by which they con­duct their ac­tiv­i­ties. I need to know what in­for­ma­tion they’re get­ting, how they use it, what the re­sults are of their ac­tions or in­ac­tions.”

Paul al­so point­ed out that the min­istry has an im­por­tant re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to en­sure that re­tired rigs are prop­er­ly han­dled to en­sure the en­vi­ron­ment is catered to. He added, “This goes back many decades. As an ex­am­ple, when Tex­a­co want­ed to leave Trinidad, Tex­a­co ne­go­ti­at­ed to leave on the con­di­tion that they would give up the land op­er­a­tions, they gave up the re­fin­ery, but they would keep op­er­at­ing Trin­mar, the ma­rine acreage, which was very prof­itable for 10 years. Tex­a­co did that. At the end of those 10 years, Trin­mar’s as­sets, the plat­form, the pipeline, the rigs, were so run down. Tex­a­co did not main­tain them, so when Petrotrin took over, they could nev­er get the Trin­mar pro­duc­tion back up. The min­istry has an oblig­a­tion to in­spect those op­er­a­tions, and make sure they’ve been main­tained prop­er­ly.”

Miller said while this coun­try has be­come de­pen­dent on the en­er­gy sec­tor, it has ques­tions to an­swer.

“T&T has built much of its econ­o­my around oil and gas, so the tran­si­tion must be re­al­is­tic, or­der­ly and fair, but that his­to­ry shouldn’t pre­vent an hon­est as­sess­ment of where the coun­try is head­ed. While the en­er­gy sec­tor is pro­vid­ing jobs, pro­vid­ing pub­lic rev­enue, ex­pand­ing new off­shore oil and gas al­so brings grow­ing eco­nom­ic, en­vi­ron­men­tal, and fi­nan­cial risks as well, from strand­ed as­sets, from oil spills, im­pacts on fish­eries, and tourism and coastal com­mu­ni­ties. I don’t know if those im­pacts have been quan­ti­fied over time. I don’t have a clear pic­ture of what those im­pacts have looked like, so I think that that’s an in­ter­est­ing ques­tion to re­al­ly look at,” Miller­stat­ed,

Mooni­lal on re­port

I haven’t seen the re­port, but based up­on what you’ve said, we have been in touch with the Min­istry of Plan­ning, and we work very close­ly with the EMA (En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty) - a very strong and ag­gres­sive chair­man on the board is there. We work with the EMA and the Min­istry of Plan­ning and the multi­na­tion­al com­pa­nies that have very ro­bust sys­tems in the place and pro­to­cols re­lat­ing to the en­vi­ron­ment, re­lat­ing to mat­ters of ma­rine in­tegri­ty, and so on. Once we con­tin­ue to work with­in the frame­work with­in the law we are sat­is­fied. We will not be in breach of in­ter­na­tion­al law. We will not be in breach of any en­vi­ron­men­tal ma­rine con­ven­tions to which T&T are par­ty.