It will take some time and some amount of sitting down together, before the ‘nuts and bolts’ of the proposed Caribbean Energy Alliance, put forward recently by the T&T Energy Minister Stuart Young, can be properly ‘fleshed out.’ One makes this point, acutely aware of the reputation which Caribbean politicians have acquired as ‘dreamers’. If the oil-sharing idea is to go any further – and it is unquestionably deserving of deeper contemplation – then it is for Trinidad and Tobago to ‘make the running.’
It can do so by immediately formalizing and suitably sharing the idea, in the first instance and afterwards, by seeking to ensure that it secures the early attention of the other envisaged benefactors. As Minister Young himself points out, any eventual agreed proposal will have to come from the three envisaged benefactor CARICOM member countries. One makes these initial observations bearing in mind, particularly, of the proclivity of Caribbean politicians for palaver and prevarication. An idea of this nature may well make its way past CARICOM member governments with considerably less than lightning speed, even though the energy challenges that bar much of the region’s way to a socio-economic ‘leap forward’ is, overwhelmingly, a function of its energy deficiency.
The envisaged benefactor countries, will of course, have to have their own ‘sit-downs’ to determine how well the ‘deal’ can be optimized to suit their respective national interests and satisfy their individual development priorities. In contemplating the ‘offer’ made by the Trinidad and Tobago Energy Minister, one cannot help but hark back to PetroCaribe, a 2005 oil procurement arrangement between Venezuela and CARICOM member states, during the tenure of Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez. The deal created a ‘god-sent’ opening for the beneficiary countries to secure oil from Venezuela under concessionary financial arrangements at a time when the economies of the energy-starved member countries of CARICOM (with the exception of Trinidad and Tobago) had become immersed in deep crisis. Here, it has to be said that in contemplating how best to arrive at a point where an across-the-board agreement can be realized, it may well not hurt to remove the PetroCaribe Agreement from its moth balls to determine whether some of the broad principles that informed that arrangement might apply in this instance.
The first step of having such a deal ‘fleshed out,’ among Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago and Suriname, in the first instance, and afterwards, among those three and the contemplated beneficiary countries, should be treated as a matter of urgency given what we know to be the prevailing energy challenges confronting the overwhelming majority of CARICOM member countries. Whether this turns out to be the case, however, is an entirely different matter. Expeditiousness is not a highly-valued propensity at the level of officialdom here in the Caribbean. There will almost certainly be a mandatory interlude of palaver, a part of the process with which we can hardly pretend not to be familiar. What is noteworthy here is that the surfacing of the ‘idea’ (it is no more than an idea at this time) coincides with other ideas for a regional development agenda which include the creation of a regional food terminal, reducing extra- regional food imports by 25% by 2025, and moving to consolidate regional food security by optimizing opportunities for the consolidation of agriculture across the region as a whole. All of these are rendered decidedly more doable if they are pursued against the backdrop of more reliable energy supplies at the region-wide level which, presumably, forms part of the thinking of the advocates of a regional energy-sharing arrangement.
Up to this time (as far as we know) the T&T Energy Minister’s idea is yet to be buttressed by a more structured proposal. Accordingly, it will not attract any kind of meaningful response before it is, first, ‘structured,’ and afterwards, shared, in the first instance, with Trinidad and Tobago’s envisaged partners in the energy-sharing arrangement. Indeed, we can only get a sense of how seriously the idea is likely to be taken beyond what the Trinidad and Tobago Minister has said after it benefits from a somewhat more detailed presentation that lends itself to a structured discourse. For all we know, the Trinidad and Tobago government may already be in possession of some sort of an initial concept paper which might form the foundation for an initial ‘sit down’ with Guyana and Suriname. That initial step should not be too long in coming if the idea is truly a serious one, and if we are to avoid the customary moth ball syndrome.
