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Monday, July 21, 2025

Moonilal expects ‘rapid’ increase in oil prices

by

27 days ago
20250624
Energy Minister Dr Roodal Moonilal speaks during the debate on the supplementary Budget 2025 funding in Parliament yesterday.

Energy Minister Dr Roodal Moonilal speaks during the debate on the supplementary Budget 2025 funding in Parliament yesterday.

ABRAHAM DIAZ

Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal is pro­ject­ing a rapid “ex­plo­sion” of high­er oil prices due to the Is­rael/Iran/US con­flict.

Speak­ing in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day dur­ing the de­bate on the sup­ple­men­tary 2025 Bud­get fund­ing, Mooni­lal said a re­fin­ery restart com­mit­tee was to be im­ple­ment­ed to seek a quick tech­ni­cal as­sess­ment of the for­mer Petrotrin re­fin­ery and a suit­able part­ner will be sought to help re­sume op­er­a­tions.

And Gov­ern­ment is work­ing with the US and oth­er au­thor­i­ties, in­clud­ing in Venezuela, on the cross-bor­der gas reser­voirs there.

Fol­low­ing the re­cent US strikes on Iran and re­ports of tankers re­vers­ing course near the Strait of Hor­muz, Mooni­lal not­ed it was a ma­jor ship­ping route for en­er­gy prod­ucts.

“So, we ex­pect an in­crease in the price of oil ... rapid, they call it an ex­plo­sion,” he said.

Not­ing Shell’s open­ness on the Man­a­tee field ex­plo­ration, Mooni­lal said Gov­ern­ment brought “bara­cat” to the pol­i­tics and gov­er­nance to cre­ate good for­tune and T&T is now look­ing at a 10 per cent in­crease in gas and its rev­enue al­so.

Mooni­lal, who said T&T has to pro­duce more oil, not­ed the US Pres­i­dent’s “drill ba­by drill” slo­gan. He said the Gov­ern­ment’s mantra was “keep it pump­ing” and in a few days, a new Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um board will be in place, man­dat­ed to re­turn oil pro­duc­tion to 2015 lev­els.

On the re­fin­ery, Mooni­lal said, “We’ve worked with our labour sec­tor part­ners—Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gies—and the OW­TU to en­sure we have a clear un­der­stand­ing of their plan and vi­sion for re­open­ing the re­fin­ery.”

He said as the Prime Min­is­ter an­nounced last Thurs­day the Gov­ern­ment had been work­ing with the OW­TU and oth­ers to look at a restart for the re­fin­ery.

“Sev­er­al things have to hap­pen at the same time: tech­ni­cal, sci­en­tif­ic, com­mer­cial, eco­nom­ic, con­trac­tu­al. But we’re on the verge of im­ple­ment­ing a re­fin­ery restart com­mit­tee with tech­ni­cal ex­perts agreed up­on. The men and women of that com­mit­tee have 500 years’ ex­pe­ri­ence in the re­fin­ery ser­vice and we’re now go­ing for quick tech­ni­cal as­sess­ment of that re­fin­ery.

“Then we’ll en­gage a suit­able part­ner through a prop­er, open trans­par­ent process to help us to restart in terms of the tech­ni­cal ca­pa­bil­i­ty,” Mooni­lal ex­plained.

He said Gov­ern­ment had to get an as­sess­ment and couldn’t con­tin­ue spend­ing $400,000 which is cur­rent­ly be­ing paid—to a provider named Damus—for “moth­balling” the plant with­out any lu­bri­cant be­ing pro­duced there.

“So, we’ll en­gage a rel­e­vant suit­able part­ner. We’re speak­ing as well to the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty in terms of the tech­ni­cal part of the restart—what is re­quired. Then we’re work­ing with our part­ners in the labour sec­tor and col­lab­o­rat­ing with oth­ers so in the short­est pos­si­ble time we’ll have our re­fin­ery,” Mooni­lal said.

He said Gov­ern­ment will then look at oth­er play­ers.

“We’re in dis­cus­sions with the cham­ber in Guyana and with gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials to en­sure we have some com­mon­al­i­ty there, so we can source the im­por­tant in­puts for the re­fin­ery from Suri­name, Guyana and else­where, where we’ve al­ways been sourc­ing oil for the re­fin­ery.”

Say­ing Gov­ern­ment un­der­stood the im­por­tance of the cross-bor­der gas reser­voirs, he added, “We’re work­ing with the au­thor­i­ties in the US and al­so with au­thor­i­ties else­where—in Venezuela as well—to en­sure we can have some com­mon ap­proach to even­tu­al­ly ben­e­fit­ting from cross bor­der fields.”

Not­ing that the US gov­ern­ment had can­celled T&T’s li­cences for the Man­akin-Cocuina and Drag­on fields, Mooni­lal said, “We’re now work­ing with all in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners to en­sure those mat­ters can be re­solved in a way that ben­e­fits Cari­com ter­ri­to­ries, be con­sis­tent with US for­eign pol­i­cy and al­so ben­e­fit the co-own­ers of those gas fields.”


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