Gail Alexan­der

Gov­ern­ment has al­ready been hav­ing the nec­es­sary dis­cus­sions and pur­su­ing “what needs to be pur­sued” to ben­e­fit T&T fol­low­ing re­cent talks be­tween the US and Venezuela.

And En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young goes to Wash­ing­ton next week to con­tin­ue ef­forts on this

Young in­di­cat­ed this at yes­ter­day’s post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing

He was com­ment­ing on whether there were po­ten­tial ben­e­fits for T&T fol­low­ing the talks which re­cent­ly oc­curred be­tween the US and Venezuela, af­ter many years of US sanc­tions against Venezuela.

The re­open­ing of di­a­logue fol­lowed Rus­sia’s at­tack on Ukraine and the US’s sanc­tion against Rus­sia.

Fol­low­ing the US-Venezuela talks last week­end, Venezuela re­leased two jailed US cit­i­zens.

On T&T’s po­si­tion, Young said, “This is not a Gov­ern­ment that is sleep­ing or not con­nect­ed, but it’s al­ways look­ing for op­por­tu­ni­ties for T&T. There were ques­tions asked why the Prime Min­is­ter and I went to Qatar the oth­er day. It was be­cause that was to sit at ta­bles with lead­ers with the peo­ple who hold over 71 per cent of glob­al gas re­serves, in­clud­ing Venezuela.”

He added: “We’re very ac­tive all the time pur­su­ing things that ben­e­fit T&T. What we’re see­ing here, we have al­ready been hav­ing the nec­es­sary dis­cus­sions and al­ready pur­su­ing what needs to be pur­sued to ben­e­fit T&T, es­pe­cial­ly in the area of gas. And there will be more com­ing out of that in the not too dis­tant fu­ture.

“There was one ar­ti­cle in the pa­per which said ‘Young should go to Wash­ing­ton DC next week’. I was al­ready plan­ning to be in Wash­ing­ton next week.”

He added: “The Prime Min­is­ter and my­self are al­ways look­ing at op­por­tu­ni­ties and an­gles for T&T and we’ll con­tin­ue to pur­sue that and hope­ful­ly come with good news.”

He said the Min­istry of Fi­nance and his min­istry were look­ing at the op­tions re­sult­ing from oil price in­creas­es and its in­flu­ence on the fu­el sub­sidy and the lib­er­al­i­sa­tion is­sue. The oil price is now US$112.

He said the Prime Min­is­ter in­di­cat­ed the Gov­ern­ment will work out what bur­den the tax­pay­er can car­ry in this sce­nario, but there’s no de­ci­sion yet. He said there wasn’t an in­ten­tion to go ful­ly in­to lib­er­al­i­sa­tion but Fi­nance and En­er­gy were tasked to look at it and make rec­om­men­da­tions to Cab­i­net.

Young said Gov­ern­ment won’t get rid of the CNG in­fra­struc­ture as it moves for­ward with elec­tric ve­hi­cles but the CNG sys­tem won’t be ex­pand­ed.

The move to­ward elec­tric ve­hi­cles – in keep­ing with re­duc­tion of car­bon emis­sions by 30 per cent – in­cludes elec­tric bus­es and putting in more elec­tric ve­hi­cle charg­ing ports in strate­gic ar­eas across T&T.

On bids for the Guaracara re­fin­ery, Young said four pro­pos­als have come in.

“They’ve been re­viewed with the Fi­nance Min­is­ter and my­self. De­ci­sions were tak­en, they had cer­tain re­quests for ex­ten­sions of time and to come and vis­it the re­fin­ery,” he said.

He said Gov­ern­ment would on­ly take se­ri­ous­ly an en­ti­ty that comes with a prop­er pro­pos­al to restart the re­fin­ery.

“From those do­ing the in­ter­ac­tion with the in­ter­na­tion­al con­sul­tants, we ex­pect that to close off in ear­ly April. Let’s wait and see what comes in and if there’s some­thing fea­si­ble, let’s pro­ceed,” he said.

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