SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Se­nior In­ves­tiga­tive Re­porter

shal­iza.has­sanali@guardian.co.tt

On the heels of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s an­nounce­ment last night that the Drag­on gas field is dead and the Gov­ern­ment will be pur­su­ing oth­er op­tions, econ­o­mist and en­er­gy strat­e­gy con­sul­tant Gre­go­ry McGuire says this must be a pri­or­i­ty as it is “a dif­fi­cult time for Trinidad and To­ba­go” in the en­er­gy sec­tor.

Ad­dress­ing re­porters fol­low­ing last night’s swear­ing in of her Cab­i­net at Pres­i­dent’s House, Per­sad-Bisses­sar did not mince her words when she said “the Drag­on gas is dead.”

She added, “We would be fool­ish not to look else­where. In fact, we should have start­ed that search long ago. We should not have put every­thing in the Drag­on gas. That is dead.”

The PM said she has man­dat­ed En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal to ex­plore.

“I in­tend to send my Min­is­ter of En­er­gy to Grena­da be­cause I am be­ing told that Grena­da off­shore has more gas and oil than the drag­on field. So we shall ex­plore that. Let us ex­plore that so we can live and work to­geth­er here in the Cari­com.”

Last month, then prime min­is­ter Stu­art Young con­firmed that the Unit­ed States had re­voked T&T’s li­cences to de­vel­op the Drag­on gas deal with Venezuela.

McGuire was asked what is the first thing Mooni­lal should do in the en­er­gy sec­tor

“The biggest cri­sis in the en­er­gy sec­tor is the need to se­cure gas sup­plies. That’s the biggest cri­sis. And that has to be pri­or­i­ty. Find­ing new sup­pli­ers. And of course, that in­volves en­gag­ing the com­pa­nies, stim­u­lat­ing new, on­go­ing ex­plo­ration ac­tiv­i­ty,” McGuire re­spond­ed.

Asked where can T&T source its gas from, McGuire said there are do­mes­tic op­tions in terms of the fields that are cur­rent­ly un­der pro­duc­tion and un­der de­vel­op­ment.

“I think it’s about nine fields or nine projects that are un­der­de­vel­oped right now and due to come in­to pro­duc­tion over the next two or three years. All around Trinidad and To­ba­go, some of them in the deep wa­ter and so on.”

“And then of course, the next thing with the high­est po­ten­tial is Venezuela. And then we hear about, we know, that Guyana has gas, has sub­stan­tial quan­ti­ties of gas, so that the chal­lenge there is go­ing to be what is the cost of the pipeline? And what is go­ing to be the cost of the land­ed gas in Trinidad? Be­cause it has to make eco­nom­ic sense.”

Un­til such fea­si­bil­i­ty stud­ies are done, McGuire said we won’t know whether this is a gen­uine op­tion for us.

Among the coun­tries we can ob­tain gas from, McGuire said, are Guyana, Suri­name, Venezuela and do­mes­tic.

“And of course, I just heard the Prime Min­is­ter men­tion Grena­da. And yes, Grena­da does have some de­posits there.”

He said it has not been proven yet.

“If you have a gas mar­ket, it means that, and there’s a short­age of sup­ply, it means that’s a big in­cen­tive to find gas to sell to that mar­ket, which is what is hap­pen­ing now. So I can’t be more op­ti­mistic than the ge­ol­o­gists.”