Against the backdrop of a challenging year for the global energy sector arising primarily from the fallout from the Russia/Ukraine conflict and the attendant global oil and gas supply bottlenecks, the Trinidad and Tobago oil and gas sector more than held its own in 2022, according to the country’s Energy and Energy Industries Minister Stuart Young.
A report published in the New Year’s Eve edition of the Trinidad Guardian quotes the minister as saying that amidst the wider challenges that had afflicted the global energy landscape in 2022, including the consequential impact on commodity prices, Trinidad and Tobago’s oil and gas companies had ‘delivered’ 57 per cent of the country’s overall revenue in 2022. The Guardian report quotes Young as saying that the country’s energy sector, including its petrochemical facilities, long the backbone of the country’s economy, directly contributed TT$30 billion in revenue, out of the country’s overall revenue earnings of TT$53 billion in the year just ended. During a year in which the war in the Ukraine had brought the global energy industry into sharper focus, the Trinidad and Tobago Energy Minister said that the country’s oil and gas industry had achieved “more global recognition and (had been) at the tables where the global decision-making is taking place with respect to the energy sector.” That apart, Young also pointedly underscored what he said had been the fact that the country’s energy sector had “contributed significantly not only to our economy but also to the welfare of our people in T&T.”