JESSE RAMDEO

Se­nior Re­porter

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr. Roodal Mooni­lal has an­nounced that he will lead a small, high-lev­el del­e­ga­tion to Wash­ing­ton D.C. from No­vem­ber 28 to 30 for a se­ries of strate­gic meet­ings aimed at deep­en­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go’s en­er­gy ties with the Unit­ed States.

Dur­ing to­day's post cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing, Dr Mooni­lal not­ed that the talks will in­clude en­gage­ments with se­nior of­fi­cials from the U.S. De­part­ment of En­er­gy, the De­part­ment of State, and oth­ers.

Ac­cord­ing to Min­is­ter Mooni­lal, the dis­cus­sions will fo­cus on strength­en­ing bi­lat­er­al co­op­er­a­tion, ex­plor­ing in­vest­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties, and ad­vanc­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go’s role as a key en­er­gy play­er in the hemi­sphere.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go del­e­ga­tion is al­so sched­uled to hold talks with rep­re­sen­ta­tives from Shell, one of the coun­try’s ma­jor en­er­gy part­ners.

It is ex­pect­ed that talks will cov­er on­go­ing joint ven­tures and the po­ten­tial for ex­pand­ed up­stream and down­stream col­lab­o­ra­tion.

In a re­lat­ed de­vel­op­ment, the Gov­ern­ment of Guyana has in­formed Trinidad and To­ba­go that its en­er­gy of­fi­cials are seek­ing to part­ner with their coun­ter­parts in Port-of-Spain to re­vive a joint work­ing group fo­cused on en­er­gy co­op­er­a­tion.

The move sig­nals re­newed re­gion­al ef­forts to fos­ter strate­gic en­er­gy part­ner­ships.

The Wash­ing­ton vis­it will mark the first of­fi­cial U.S. trip by Min­is­ter Mooni­lal in his cur­rent port­fo­lio, un­der­scor­ing the ad­min­is­tra­tion’s com­mit­ment to high-lev­el diplo­ma­cy in ad­vanc­ing na­tion­al en­er­gy in­ter­ests.