RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

While wel­com­ing news that Trinidad and To­ba­go is set to re­ceive 1.7 tril­lion cu­bic feet of nat­ur­al gas from Venezuela’s Lo­ran field, Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of the Amer­i­can Cham­ber of Com­merce of Trinidad and To­ba­go (AM­CHAM), Ni­rad Tewarie, warned that so­cial and po­lit­i­cal di­vi­sion could un­der­mine the coun­try’s abil­i­ty to ful­ly cap­i­talise on the op­por­tu­ni­ty.

Speak­ing short­ly af­ter En­er­gy Min­is­ter Roodal Mooni­lal an­nounced in Par­lia­ment that the Bo­li­var­i­an Re­pub­lic of Venezuela had grant­ed Shell a li­cence to de­vel­op the off­shore Lo­ran field, Tewarie de­scribed the de­vel­op­ment as a ma­jor break­through for the coun­try’s en­er­gy sec­tor.

How­ev­er, he cau­tioned that na­tion­al uni­ty and col­lab­o­ra­tion would be es­sen­tial if T&T has to re­alise the full eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits.

“Di­vi­sion in so­ci­ety. If there is too much di­vi­sion in our so­ci­ety, noth­ing that hap­pens at the macro lev­el is go­ing to re­sult in the kind of change and ben­e­fit that we want as a coun­try,” Tewarie said.

He added that na­tion­al co­he­sion would be crit­i­cal if T&T is to re­gain its po­si­tion as a lead­ing eco­nom­ic, so­cial and po­lit­i­cal force with­in the Caribbean and the wider hemi­sphere.

Tewarie said the li­cence ap­proval rep­re­sent­ed a sig­nif­i­cant mile­stone af­ter years of un­cer­tain­ty sur­round­ing cross-bor­der gas projects.

“We’re very ex­cit­ed. That’s good news. It is the first step of a long process be­cause the fi­nal in­vest­ment de­ci­sion by Shell still has to hap­pen,” he said.

“The fact that they got the agree­ment from Venezuela to al­low the gas to cross the bor­der is a huge step and we’re very hap­py and ex­cit­ed. It por­tends well for the fu­ture of the econ­o­my.”

De­spite the pos­i­tive out­look, Tewarie not­ed that the ben­e­fits would not be im­me­di­ate.

Based on time­lines cur­rent­ly avail­able, he said, if all goes well, in­creased gas pro­duc­tion could be­gin with­in two-and-a-half to three years, al­though fi­nal sched­ules re­main de­pen­dent on de­ci­sions by Shell and on­go­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions among stake­hold­ers.

“We could start see­ing an uptick in gas pro­duc­tion in two and a half to three years and hope­ful­ly that will re­lieve some of the bur­den,” he said.

“But we have to en­sure that when we do see the uptick in gas pro­duc­tion, we have the var­i­ous com­po­nents of the in­dus­try in Trinidad and To­ba­go to ab­sorb and utilise the gas.”

Tewarie said the pe­ri­od lead­ing up to pro­duc­tion would re­quire close col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the Gov­ern­ment, en­er­gy com­pa­nies and pri­vate sec­tor or­gan­i­sa­tions.

He ac­knowl­edged that the coun­try con­tin­ues to face sig­nif­i­cant eco­nom­ic chal­lenges but said there were en­cour­ag­ing signs for the fu­ture.

“There are very re­al, promis­ing signs of a pros­per­ous eco­nom­ic fu­ture as long as we en­sure there is trans­paren­cy, there is ef­fec­tive rule of law, and we get crime and jus­tice un­der con­trol,” he said.