KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of En­er­gy, Ernesto Ke­sar, says this coun­try’s off­shore oil and gas op­er­a­tions will not be af­fect­ed by the pres­ence of Unit­ed States mil­i­tary ves­sels in wa­ters close to Trinidad’s coast.

The US has de­ployed mul­ti­ple war­ships to the south­ern Caribbean as part of its mis­sion against drug traf­fick­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly in wa­ters near Venezuela. In­ter­na­tion­al news re­ports in­di­cat­ed that the fleet in­cludes guid­ed-mis­sile de­stroy­ers, an am­phibi­ous squadron, and a nu­clear-pow­ered sub­ma­rine. Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has al­ready ex­pressed pub­lic sup­port for the de­ploy­ment.

Speak­ing to re­porters in St Madeleine yes­ter­day, Ke­sar de­clined to go in­to de­tail, say­ing that the Prime Min­is­ter and oth­er au­thor­i­ties were lead­ing dis­cus­sions re­gard­ing the de­vel­op­ment. He not­ed that oil and gas are in­ter­na­tion­al busi­ness­es, and the in­dus­try has con­tin­gen­cies even dur­ing pe­ri­ods of ten­sion.

Still, the pres­ence of for­eign mil­i­tary ves­sels has un­set­tled some res­i­dents, par­tic­u­lar­ly fish­er­men along the south­ern coast, who fear vi­o­lence, dis­rup­tion to their liveli­hoods, and risks to off­shore en­er­gy work­ers.

Ke­sar said he had not re­ceived any re­ports of is­sues af­fect­ing the Sol­da­do (for­mer­ly Trin­mar) field lo­cat­ed in the Gulf of Paria. He ac­knowl­edged the con­cerns of fish­er­folk as le­git­i­mate but added that the mat­ter re­mained a high pri­or­i­ty, and he did not wish to com­ment fur­ther.

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Mean­while, Ke­sar con­firmed that the min­istry had re­ceived cor­re­spon­dence from Wells Ser­vices Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny Ltd re­gard­ing its ac­tion plan for sal­vage op­er­a­tions on the col­lapsed Rig 110. He said the min­istry would main­tain over­sight to en­sure all par­ties com­plied with reg­u­la­tions.

On De­cem­ber 22, 2024, an off­shore rig work­ing for Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um in the Gulf of Paria col­lapsed. A sec­tion of the der­rick fell in­to the sea, lead­ing to the dis­ap­pear­ance of 47-year-old work­er Pe­te Phillip. While 74 oth­er work­ers were safe­ly evac­u­at­ed, Phillip has not been found de­spite ex­ten­sive search and res­cue op­er­a­tions.

Ke­sar said the min­istry con­tin­ues to op­er­ate in the back­ground as a reg­u­la­to­ry body, press­ing all stake­hold­ers to re­solve the mat­ter. He de­scribed the sit­u­a­tion as del­i­cate, not­ing that it has per­sist­ed for al­most a year and stress­ing that the min­istry re­mains com­mit­ted to work­ing with all par­ties to reach a res­o­lu­tion.