CHESTER SAM­BRA­NO

& AKASH SAMA­ROO

Trinidad and To­ba­go and Grena­da have re­newed ef­forts to strength­en co­op­er­a­tion in the en­er­gy sec­tor, with Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Grena­di­an Prime Min­is­ter Dick­on Mitchell meet­ing yes­ter­day to for­mal­ly restart the process.

The meet­ing took place at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre in St Ann’s and last­ed about 30 min­utes. Al­so present were At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al of Grena­da Claudette Joseph, Min­is­ter of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Sean Sobers, and Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries Roodal Mooni­lal.

In a re­lease last evening, the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter said both gov­ern­ments ac­knowl­edged their shared in­ter­est in con­tin­u­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion in en­er­gy, re­call­ing the 2012 Frame­work Agree­ment on En­er­gy Sec­tor Co­op­er­a­tion, which re­mains in ef­fect through au­to­mat­ic re­new­al. Un­der the arrange­ment, T&T will name its rep­re­sen­ta­tives to the Steer­ing Com­mit­tee with­in three weeks to re­sume dis­cus­sions.

As part of the re­newed en­gage­ment, the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries of T&T will sign a da­ta use agree­ment with Grena­da next week. This will pro­vide Grena­da ac­cess to seis­mic and well da­ta from Trinidad’s North Coast, sup­port­ing its on­go­ing re­gion­al tech­ni­cal study. T&T will al­so sup­ply tech­ni­cal ex­perts to as­sist Grena­da in de­vel­op­ing a pe­tro­le­um reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work and re­view stud­ies con­duct­ed by con­sul­tants.

Speak­ing to jour­nal­ists af­ter the meet­ing with Mitchell ear­li­er yes­ter­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar en­er­gy co­op­er­a­tion re­mained cen­tral to the dis­cus­sions.

“Sev­er­al mat­ters were dis­cussed; chief con­cern was co­op­er­a­tion in the en­er­gy sec­tor. When I formed the Gov­ern­ment, in my first speech I talked about hav­ing clos­er re­la­tion­ships with Grena­da,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.

Asked about pos­si­ble en­er­gy projects with Venezuela, she replied that for now, the fo­cus is on Grena­da.

The Prime Min­is­ter added, “I just want to say thanks very much to the Ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter of Grena­da join­ing us here in Trinidad and To­ba­go on the eve of in­de­pen­dence. So, we want to wish you all and, of course, our na­tion hap­py in­de­pen­dence on Sun­day, a day of prayer and re­flec­tion for us. Again, Prime Min­is­ter (Mitchell), I want to thank you very much and we had very fruit­ful dis­cus­sions.”

Mitchell de­scribed T&T as Grena­da’s “clos­est neigh­bour” and wel­comed the col­lab­o­ra­tion.

“I al­so want to take the op­por­tu­ni­ty to al­so con­grat­u­late the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go on the cel­e­bra­tion of yet an­oth­er an­niver­sary of in­de­pen­dence. Trinidad is our clos­est neigh­bour, not just ge­o­graph­i­cal­ly, but in terms of our part­ner­ship, our re­la­tion­ship. There are many, many peo­ple who live in Trinidad who are ei­ther de­scen­dants of Grena­di­ans or Grena­di­ans,” he said.

“And so whether it’s Car­ni­val, whether it’s mu­sic, whether it’s food, whether it’s cul­ture, we’re on­ly 35 min­utes away. And so, I’m in­deed very, very hap­py to have been giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to be host­ed.”

On Grena­da’s de­vel­op­ment pri­or­i­ties, Mitchell added, “As the Prime Min­is­ter said, it was a very good meet­ing. The pri­ma­ry of dis­cus­sion was a fo­cus on en­er­gy.”

As part of the con­tin­u­ing co­op­er­a­tion, the re­lease said, Grena­da will fi­nalise its tech­ni­cal study and make da­ta avail­able for po­ten­tial in­vestors, fo­cus­ing first on un­li­censed ar­eas. T&T will help with a pro­mo­tion­al cam­paign to mar­ket Grena­da’s acreage and sup­port multi­na­tion­al in­volve­ment in tech­ni­cal and in­sti­tu­tion­al as­sis­tance.

The talks al­so touched on med­ical col­lab­o­ra­tion, with T&T pledg­ing to ex­plore ways of as­sist­ing Grena­da in ad­dress­ing short­ages of spe­cial­ist doc­tors.

The re­lease not­ed that T&T, with decades of ex­pe­ri­ence as a hy­dro­car­bon pro­duc­er, is po­si­tioned to share its ex­per­tise and in­fra­struc­ture to help Grena­da de­vel­op its re­sources. A key part of this co­op­er­a­tion in­volves the Nut­meg gas field, dis­cov­ered in 2017 in wa­ters be­tween the two coun­tries. The Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go al­ready holds a com­mer­cial agree­ment with Glob­al Pe­tro­le­um Group, giv­ing it first pref­er­ence to pur­chase gas from the field and use T&T’s in­fra­struc­ture for pro­cess­ing.

Both lead­ers closed by com­mit­ting to “sus­tained, mean­ing­ful en­gage­ment” across en­er­gy, health, and oth­er ar­eas, reaf­firm­ing the long­stand­ing friend­ship and shared her­itage be­tween the two na­tions.