An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

For­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Stu­art Young has warned that de­ci­sions sur­round­ing gas al­lo­ca­tion, state en­er­gy rev­enues, and cross-bor­der ne­go­ti­a­tions are plac­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go’s in­dus­tri­al base and long-term en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty at risk, while cau­tion­ing that mem­bers of the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) board could face per­son­al le­gal con­se­quences.

Speak­ing yes­ter­day at an Op­po­si­tion news con­fer­ence, Young de­liv­ered a sus­tained cri­tique of Gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy, fo­cus­ing on the man­age­ment of NGC, Point Lisas, and cross-bor­der en­er­gy ne­go­ti­a­tions in­volv­ing Venezuela.

He ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of mis­lead­ing the pop­u­la­tion by pre­sent­ing unau­dit­ed NGC ac­counts in Par­lia­ment, de­scrib­ing the move as “not on­ly fright­en­ing, it is dan­ger­ous” and stress­ing that such fig­ures must be treat­ed “with a bag of salt”.

He ques­tioned whether ac­count­ing im­pair­ments had been re­versed to in­flate prof­itabil­i­ty and pressed for trans­paren­cy, ask­ing, “Where are the au­dit­ed ac­counts?”

Young ar­gued that NGC’s im­proved fi­nan­cial per­for­mance is not due to cur­rent pol­i­cy but stems from de­ci­sions made un­der the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion, in­clud­ing the rene­go­ti­a­tion of gas pric­ing and the re­struc­tur­ing of At­lantic LNG.

“That is the rea­son for NGC’s re­al prof­itabil­i­ty. Ab­solute­ly noth­ing to do with Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and her in­com­pe­tent fol­low­ers,” he stat­ed.

He al­so is­sued a di­rect warn­ing to NGC’s lead­er­ship, point­ing to le­gal ex­po­sure if fidu­cia­ry du­ties are breached.

“You breach those, and ac­tion will be tak­en against you, per­son­al­ly,” he said, adding that board mem­bers who fail to chal­lenge de­ci­sions could be held li­able.

On Point Lisas, Young warned that cur­rent gas al­lo­ca­tion poli­cies are un­der­min­ing the in­dus­tri­al base, as sup­ply is be­ing di­vert­ed to LNG ex­ports to cap­ture high­er prices.

“You are de­stroy­ing Point Lisas to­day,” he said, cau­tion­ing that shut­downs could es­ca­late.

“It is not go­ing to lead on­ly to loss of jobs; it is the col­lapse of an in­dus­try.”

Turn­ing to the Lo­ran-Man­a­tee field, he de­scribed it as crit­i­cal to fu­ture sup­ply and cred­it­ed a 2019 agree­ment with Venezuela to de-link the Man­a­tee por­tion from the cross-bor­der field. That step, he not­ed, al­lowed de­vel­op­ment to pro­ceed in­de­pen­dent­ly.

“It would not have been de­vel­oped if it were not for that sin­gle act.”

He dis­missed ref­er­ences to “Man­a­tee Plus” as repack­ag­ing, ex­plain­ing that in­creased out­put was al­ways an­tic­i­pat­ed.

“It is sim­ply tak­ing more gas out of the Man­a­tee side, which was al­ways on the cards,” he said, adding that fur­ther ex­pan­sion de­pends on ac­cess to Venezuela’s Lo­ran re­serves.

Young ar­gued that the Gov­ern­ment is no longer di­rect­ly en­gaged in ne­go­ti­a­tions with Venezuela, leav­ing multi­na­tion­al com­pa­nies to lead. “They are leav­ing every­thing up to the multi­na­tion­al we were pur­su­ing on be­half of the cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go,” he out­lined.

He linked this to strained diplo­mat­ic re­la­tions with Venezuela and Act­ing Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­dríguez, warn­ing that past rhetoric has had con­se­quences.

“You can­not stand up for years and abuse a per­son in au­thor­i­ty. That is not how you act diplo­mat­i­cal­ly.”

Young not­ed that the Prime Min­is­ter has been de­clared per­sona non gra­ta by Venezuela’s Na­tion­al As­sem­bly, ar­gu­ing that this has weak­ened Trinidad and To­ba­go’s po­si­tion.

“You are per­sona non gra­ta and can go nowhere, and you have done us a dis­ser­vice,” he added.