GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Jour­nal­ist

The T&T En­er­gy Cham­ber opened its 2026 con­fer­ence by di­rect­ly ad­dress­ing crit­i­cism from the gov­ern­ment, pledg­ing a "com­pre­hen­sive re­view" of its op­er­a­tions af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Ka­mal Per­sad-Bisses­sar and state en­ter­pris­es with­drew their sup­port from the flag­ship event.

In her open­ing re­marks, chair Mala Bali­raj moved im­me­di­ate­ly to tack­le al­le­ga­tions that the or­gan­i­sa­tion has be­come an elit­ist club dom­i­nat­ed by multi­na­tion­als.

The move fol­lows a scathing as­sess­ment by PM Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who re­cent­ly la­belled the Cham­ber "self-serv­ing" and in­struct­ed state-owned en­ti­ties—in­clud­ing Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um and the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC)—to boy­cott the three-day sum­mit.

Cen­tral to the con­flict is the Safe To Work (STOW) cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, which the gov­ern­ment re­cent­ly moved to ter­mi­nate as a manda­to­ry re­quire­ment for state projects.

The Prime Min­is­ter had ac­cused the En­er­gy Cham­ber of weaponiz­ing the safe­ty pro­gramme to ex­tract high fees from small lo­cal con­trac­tors, ef­fec­tive­ly bar­ring them from the en­er­gy sec­tor.

"We have lis­tened to the mes­sage in the spir­it of con­struc­tive feed­back," Bali­raj told del­e­gates at the Hy­att Re­gency adding, "We ac­knowl­edge that some stake­hold­ers be­lieve the STOW pro­gramme has served as a bar­ri­er to the abil­i­ty of small con­trac­tors to do busi­ness. We are com­mit­ted to a col­lab­o­ra­tive ap­proach to repo­si­tion this space."

She al­so coun­tered that the 400-mem­ber or­gan­i­sa­tion spans the en­tire eco­nom­ic spec­trum, from glob­al cor­po­ra­tions to mi­cro-en­ter­pris­es.

How­ev­er, recog­nis­ing that "per­cep­tion is re­al­i­ty" in the eyes of the pub­lic and the state, Bali­raj an­nounced an im­me­di­ate re­view of in­ter­nal gov­er­nance.

"We must en­sure that the per­cep­tion is not, in fact, due to re­al­i­ty," she stat­ed, promis­ing to recom­mit to a "fair and bal­anced rep­re­sen­ta­tion" that en­sures small­er ser­vice com­pa­nies have a tan­gi­ble voice in the cham­ber’s strate­gic di­rec­tion.

De­spite the po­lit­i­cal rift, the con­fer­ence high­light­ed a pe­ri­od of in­tense ac­tiv­i­ty in the lo­cal en­er­gy land­scape.

The Cham­ber point­ed to sev­er­al ma­jor mile­stones as ev­i­dence of the sec­tor’s re­silience:

● Deep­wa­ter Re­vival: The li­cens­ing of an ul­tra-deep­wa­ter ex­plo­ration block to Exxon­Mo­bil has reignit­ed glob­al in­ter­est. The seis­mic ves­sel Ama­zon War­rior is re­port­ed­ly prepar­ing to be­gin a five-month 3D sur­vey of the block this week.

● Re­new­able Mile­stones: The Brechin Cas­tle So­lar Farm, the largest in the Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean, has of­fi­cial­ly be­gun feed­ing green elec­trons in­to the na­tion­al grid.

● Gas Pro­duc­tion: Progress re­mains steady on Shell’s Man­a­tee project and bpTT’s Cypre de­vel­op­ment, both of which are crit­i­cal to main­tain­ing the coun­try’s nat­ur­al gas sup­ply.

Bali­raj not­ed that while the gov­ern­ment's ab­sence is felt, the in­dus­try’s dai­ly op­er­at­ing re­al­i­ty re­quires high-qual­i­ty safe­ty prac­tices that "pro­tect lives and en­sure work­ers re­turn home to their fam­i­lies."

The con­fer­ence con­tin­ues through Wednes­day, with the En­er­gy Cham­ber ex­press­ing hope that a "col­lab­o­ra­tive re­set" with the State could be achieved be­fore the con­clu­sion of the 2026 cal­en­dar.