Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

While there is some op­ti­mism from tech­nocrats over the fu­ture of T&T’s en­er­gy sec­tor, par­tic­u­lar­ly in re­la­tion to the Drag­on Gas Field, econ­o­mist Dr In­dera Sage­wan is urg­ing cau­tion ahead of op­er­a­tions in the gas field.

Dr Sage­wan made the call dur­ing a post-Bud­get pan­el dis­cus­sion at Hillview Col­lege, Tu­na­puna, yes­ter­day, where she re­spond­ed to con­cerns from stu­dents about the fu­ture of this coun­try’s en­er­gy sec­tor.

Fel­low pan­el­list, chair­man of the T&T Ex­trac­tive In­dus­tries Trans­paren­cy Ini­tia­tive Gre­go­ry McGuire, in an ear­li­er part of the dis­cus­sion, said he was mod­er­ate­ly hope­ful that the en­er­gy sec­tor was grad­u­al­ly re­cov­er­ing from de­pres­sion in the af­ter­math of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

How­ev­er, Sage­wan not­ed that Venezuela’s elec­tions in 2024 could lead to un­fore­seen cir­cum­stances and urged the Gov­ern­ment to be pre­pared for any sit­u­a­tions which may arise.

“The re­sult of that elec­tion could be very sig­nif­i­cant if, for ex­am­ple, the op­po­si­tion wins the elec­tion, then it begs the ques­tion whether they would be will­ing to con­tin­ue with the ne­go­ti­a­tions and even if a con­firmed ne­go­ti­a­tion is ar­rived at, whether they would be will­ing to ho­n­our it be­cause this is a coun­try where the nor­mal prac­tices with re­spect to democ­ra­cy are not nec­es­sar­i­ly ad­hered to,” she said.

“That is a vari­able that needs to be con­sid­ered as we go for­ward and we have to there­fore be pre­pared for the pos­si­bil­i­ties of what could hap­pen com­ing out of that elec­tion.”

Ear­li­er this week, progress was made with the Drag­on Gas deal, as this coun­try was al­lowed to make cash pay­ments to Vene­zuela for the nat­ur­al gas ex­tract­ed from the Drag­on Field.

The de­vel­op­ment was an­nounced by Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries Stu­art Young.

The En­er­gy Min­is­ter ex­plained that the Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment had ap­proved an amend­ment to the li­cence grant­ed in Jan­u­ary for the joint de­vel­op­ment of the field.
Be­fore this, cash pay­ments for gas were pro­hib­it­ed. (SS)