Cu­rits Williams

cur­tis.williams@guardian.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley yes­ter­day told the an­nu­al T&T En­er­gy Con­fer­ence that while this coun­try is ob­lig­at­ed to the tran­si­tion away from fos­sil fu­els, it re­mains com­mit­ted to the de­vel­op­ment of its en­er­gy sec­tor and the max­imi­sa­tion of re­turns from it.

Row­ley said en­er­gy tran­si­tion meant dif­fer­ent things to dif­fer­ent coun­tries and for T&T, it was about en­sur­ing in the tran­si­tion process there was both en­er­gy and eco­nom­ic se­cu­ri­ty.

“We re­main com­mit­ted to the de­vel­op­ment and the max­imi­sa­tion of our nat­ur­al re­sources, which will con­tin­ue to pro­vide rev­enue stream to our coun­try in the short to medi­um term. This rev­enue stream is crit­i­cal, not on­ly for the well be­ing of our cit­i­zens but may al­so serve as a sup­ple­men­tary source of fund­ing for some of the very projects re­quired to meet our tar­get,” the Prime Min­is­ter told the con­fer­ence.

He added, “As a Gov­ern­ment, we will seek to im­ple­ment our changes in a way that does not cause un­due eco­nom­ic dis­tress to our pop­u­la­tion.”

This year’s con­fer­ence is be­ing held vir­tu­al­ly and is fo­cused on en­er­gy tran­si­tion, as the world moves to re­duce its de­pen­dence on fos­sil fu­el and get to net-ze­ro car­bon emis­sions by 2050.

Row­ley posit­ed that nat­ur­al gas, which is the clean­est burn­ing of the fos­sil fu­el, had a cru­cial role in the glob­al en­er­gy tran­si­tion, with its share of the en­er­gy mix ex­pect­ed to grow. He ex­plained, “The Gov­ern­ment of T&T recog­nis­es the im­por­tant role that nat­ur­al gas has to play in the en­er­gy tran­si­tion in both a lo­cal and glob­al con­text. Fur­ther­more, our nat­ur­al gas is part­ly en­abling the en­er­gy tran­si­tion by pro­vid­ing clean fu­el for oth­er coun­tries and there is an op­por­tu­ni­ty for nat­ur­al gas to play a greater role in the Caribbean’s en­er­gy tran­si­tion.”

Row­ley said Gov­ern­ment is cog­nisant that more needs to be done re­duce the car­bon foot­print in the en­er­gy sec­tor and he point­ed to sev­er­al projects to do so.

He not­ed that the State-owned Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny had em­barked on a project to re­duce methane emis­sions, that Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um, in con­junc­tion with the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies and Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T and the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries, are work­ing on a project to cap­ture car­bon and use it to in­crease crude pro­duc­tion and he al­so point­ed to ef­forts to cre­ate a world scale hy­dro­gen plant.

The Prime Min­is­ter al­so en­cour­aged the de­vel­op­ment of LNG in the re­gion, with this coun­try sup­ply­ing small scale LNG in the Caribbean.