The en­er­gy sec­tor may be cen­tral to T&T’s econ­o­my, but ac­cord­ing to Fitzroy Hare­wood, the pres­i­dent of Point Lisas Ni­tro­gen Lim­it­ed (PLNL), it is still un­der ap­pre­ci­at­ed and mis­un­der­stood.

Hare­wood lament­ed this dur­ing a pan­el dis­cus­sion at Am­cham T&T’s 33rd an­nu­al meet­ing and busi­ness fo­rum last Fri­day, where he urged busi­ness lead­ers to be more vig­i­lant re­gard­ing po­ten­tial needs and in­vest­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties with­in the sec­tor.

“The ad­vice to the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty is to stay en­gaged and try to un­der­stand this busi­ness. A lot of times we find that we see com­ments in the gen­er­al space and in the me­dia, where peo­ple don’t seem to un­der­stand how im­por­tant this en­er­gy in­dus­try is for this coun­try and take it for grant­ed,” he said, “They don’t seem to ap­pre­ci­ate how well we have done in es­tab­lish­ing am­mo­nia and methanol man­u­fac­tur­ing in this coun­try, and how much we are rec­og­nized across the world for what we have ac­com­plished.”

Hare­wood felt the petro­chem­i­cal sec­tor which cre­ates prod­ucts such as am­mo­nia and methanol was es­pe­cial­ly ne­glect­ed de­spite T&T be­ing one of the largest ex­porters of such prod­ucts.

He warned that the coun­try seems to be “fid­dling” while crit­i­cal is­sues face the in­dus­try, em­pha­sis­ing the need for more in­formed con­ver­sa­tions about what is re­quired to main­tain the sec­tor, such as the ne­ces­si­ty of a “run­way” for in­vest­ment.

“We need to get back at least to where we were be­fore, and then we need our run­way, that’s my one of my favourite words these days. We need space to be able to con­tem­plate as­set in­tegri­ty im­prove­ments, as well as new cap­i­tal in­vest­ments, so that we can grow the in­dus­try, but for us to do that, we need nat­ur­al gas ahead of us,” he said.

Hare­wood said there had been a sig­nif­i­cant de­cline in nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion over the last few years, which has “chal­lenged” the pro­duc­tion of petro­chem­i­cals and LNG. This de­cline, he ex­plained, had caused “anx­i­ety” with­in the in­dus­try, lead­ing some play­ers to ex­it or shut down plants.

“In some cas­es some peo­ple have sim­ply ex­it­ed the in­dus­try or shut down plants, etcetera, and so the ques­tion of look­ing for nat­ur­al gas in the fu­ture is a sig­nif­i­cant one, be­cause we need to in­crease our pro­duc­tion,” Hare­wood said, adding “It is no se­cret that what is re­quired to make the en­er­gy in­dus­try work is as­sur­ance around gas sup­ply that is medi­um to long term, and then that gas must be avail­able at a com­mer­cial ba­sis that makes op­er­at­ing fea­si­ble”

He ex­plained that with­out these as­sur­ances, in­ter­na­tion­al oil com­pa­nies can­not jus­ti­fy the mul­ti-mil­lion-dol­lar in­vest­ments re­quired for growth and main­te­nance. Hare­wood said while T&T had de­vel­oped a pos­i­tive rep­u­ta­tion in the en­er­gy world, work was need­ed to re­turn to the re­quired lev­els to con­tin­ue to se­cure in­ter­na­tion­al in­vest­ment in that in­dus­try.

“We are run­ning high-risk en­ti­ties. These petro­chem­i­cal plants and LNG fa­cil­i­ties are no tame beasts. They are sim­ply high-risk ac­tiv­i­ty, and there­fore, to give the as­sur­ance around safe­ty and in­tegri­ty, you need to make rou­tine in­vest­ments in­to the plant. It is al­most a way of life to guar­an­tee that the goose lives for a lit­tle bit longer,” he said, “Be­cause there is a sig­nif­i­cant amount of in­vest­ment that is re­quired just to re­store us to an as­set in­tegri­ty lev­el that we had be­fore, so it’s not like flip­ping a switch, it’s go­ing to take a while, and there will be a lot of work that is re­quired, but I re­main con­fi­dent that it is pos­si­ble.”

His com­ments came hours af­ter news that Shell had signed an agree­ment with the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment to de­vel­op the Lo­ran cross-bor­der gas field, which is re­port­ed to hold 7 tril­lion cu­bic feet of nat­ur­al gas.

Hare­wood ac­knowl­edged the sign­ing at the event and stat­ed that, de­spite his con­cerns cur­rent­ly, he was op­ti­mistic for the fu­ture giv­en the new op­por­tu­ni­ties pre­sent­ed by cross-bor­der fields.

The pan­el agreed that cross-bor­der col­lab­o­ra­tion with Venezuela is viewed as a crit­i­cal fac­tor for the fu­ture and “sur­viv­abil­i­ty” of T&T’s en­er­gy sec­tor, pri­mar­i­ly by pro­vid­ing ac­cess to new sources of nat­ur­al gas to bol­ster pro­duc­tion.

Pri­or to the pan­el, Amaru Lien­do, pres­i­dent of the Venezue­lan-Amer­i­can Cham­ber of Com­merce (Ve­nAm­Cham), was the fea­ture speak­er at the event.

In his ad­dress, Lien­do, who is al­so vice pres­i­dent of the As­so­ci­a­tion of Amer­i­can Cham­bers of Com­merce in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean (AAC­CLA), fea­tured a spe­cial pre­sen­ta­tion on the po­ten­tial op­por­tu­ni­ties that could be cre­at­ed by the Drag­on gas field.

“What we call the Drag­on field is a field of gas­es be­tween both coun­tries that I know could boost the eco­nom­ic re­la­tion­ship be­tween the two coun­tries, re­vi­talise that, and for sure will be a source of sup­ply of LNG gas to your At­lantic LNG plant,” said Lien­do, who stat­ed Venezuela was cur­rent­ly flar­ing gas dai­ly that could pow­er all of T&T.

He said T&T could be key to en­sur­ing that gas is put to good use, as he sug­gest­ed that com­pa­nies work­ing in the gas sec­tor in T&T can help re­build Venezuela’s ca­pac­i­ty to re­cov­er this gas in­stead of wast­ing it.

“Oil and gas are go­ing to be the pi­o­neers, but ba­sic ser­vices and mass con­sump­tion is go­ing to be an ef­fect of those things. On top of that, which are the sec­tors that are for you as mem­bers of Am­cham, and prob­a­bly are in­ter­est­ed in know­ing which is go­ing to be the op­por­tu­ni­ties in the short term.

“Lo­gis­tics, trans­port and port, that’s a big op­por­tu­ni­ty. We have ter­ri­ble ports that are un­der­served, in­fra­struc­ture is de­stroyed, and ca­pac­i­ty of get­ting in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards of ser­vice are right now ob­so­lete,” said Lien­do, who added that there are oth­er in­dus­tries where T&T busi­ness­es could in­vest.

“Health and phar­ma­cy. (Our) health sec­tor is al­most de­stroyed, and that’s an op­por­tu­ni­ty, prob­a­bly to in­vest in the pri­vate health sec­tor, and to sup­port the re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion and the ac­cess of mil­lions of peo­ple in Venezuela that have no ac­cess to a de­cent health sec­tor. I have to tell you some spe­cif­ic fig­ures. On­ly 1.6 per cent of our pop­u­la­tion have ac­cess to pri­vate sec­tor. More than 90 per cent are out of the sys­tem,” said Lien­do, “That’s a big op­por­tu­ni­ty, in terms of that’s a night­mare and a tragedy, but it’s a big op­por­tu­ni­ty.”

Lien­do said Ve­nAm­cham had cre­at­ed the Cen­tre for In­vest­ment, Com­merce and Com­pet­i­tive­ness, which is geared to­wards help­ing T&T com­pa­nies make in­vest­ments in the South Amer­i­can coun­try.

“We are ready to re­ceive the long list of in­vestors from Trinidad to en­sure you have a soft, soft-land­ing ex­pe­ri­ence ar­riv­ing in the coun­try, start­ing from the se­cu­ri­ty trans­porta­tion in the air­port to con­sular process­es to match­mak­ing to providers of goods and ser­vices,” said Lien­do,” Venezuela and Trinidad and To­ba­go not on­ly share a mar­itime bor­der. They share an en­er­gy fu­ture. Now is the time to build it to­geth­er.”