Pe­ter Christo­pher

Guyana Pre­sident Ir­faan Ali says nat­ur­al gas and fos­sil fu­els are not out of the con­ver­sa­tion just yet and while his coun­try will do its part with re­gard to re­duc­ing emis­sions and has al­ready em­barked on projects to do so, there is still a role for hy­dro­car­bons at this time.

“I see the en­er­gy tran­si­tion as a mix be­tween the fos­sil fu­el in­dus­try that still has a fore­see­able life and nat­ur­al gas, of course, but Guyana, for ex­am­ple, we have al­ready been mov­ing to so­lar, we are mov­ing to ex­am­i­na­tion of wind, hy­dro. A new hy­dro elec­tric plant that will be 165 megawatts,” Pres­i­dent Ali told re­porters at the En­er­gy Con­fer­ence the Hy­att Re­gency in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day.

“Yes the tran­si­tion has to take place, but tran­si­tion de­bate must not take place out­side of the con­tin­ued need for fos­sil fu­el and nat­ur­al gas and that is the bal­ance we have to bring. En­sur­ing that in this en­tire tran­si­tion and green­ing de­bate, the need for fos­sil and nat­ur­al gas is not tak­en out of the equa­tion.”

Dur­ing his ad­dress at the con­fer­ence, the Guyana Pres­i­dent al­so high­light­ed the in­creased dif­fi­cul­ty oil and gas com­pa­nies had been fac­ing to get fi­nanc­ing for fu­ture projects.

“It is re­al­i­ty, oil and gas com­pa­nies, they are hav­ing a greater chal­lenge these days rais­ing cap­i­tal and we had a re­cent ex­am­ple in Guyana, where a loan to an oil and gas com­pa­ny op­er­at­ing in Guyana through the IDB was ve­toed and that loan was not ap­proved be­cause the US ve­toed that loan. We have re­al ex­am­ples,” he said.

“If you look at the glob­al trends and the nar­ra­tive, you would see that there is less will­ing­ness to, or less ap­petite to that, is pro­mot­ed to a large ex­tent for lend­ing in the oil and gas sec­tor and even where there is lend­ing, the cost of cap­i­tal is very much dif­fer­ent as it was a decade ago or less.”

De­spite these chal­lenges, Ali said he was ea­ger to push on and in­deed part­ner with any gov­ern­ment will­ing to do busi­ness with his coun­try.

“We have been toy­ing with a num­ber of op­tions. We have gone out pub­licly to the bid round but there is al­so that room that we are look­ing for more gov­ern­ment-to- gov­ern­ment col­lab­o­ra­tion,” Ali said.

“There is a num­ber of docks that are still avail­able and we are hav­ing con­ver­sa­tions with var­i­ous gov­ern­ments to see the ap­petite for gov­ern­ment-to-gov­ern­ment. It in­volves any gov­ern­ment that has an in­ter­est. In­dia has ex­pressed, I would say re­cent­ly, they have ex­pressed an in­ter­est in the oil and gas sec­tor, not just the lift but the en­tire ecosys­tem sur­round­ing oil and gas.”

The Guyana Pres­i­dent al­so said he was keen on see­ing T&T’s abil­i­ty to ex­plore and max­imise its oil and gas re­sources, as he urged greater col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween CARI­COM na­tions in the sec­tor.