As Trinidad and Tobago urges collaboration with Guyana to ensure regional energy security, Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo says that this country will continue to explore cooperation with the twin island republic and Suriname as immediate demand is for refined petroleum products which it doesn’t have.
“I do believe there are synergies between Guyana, Trinidad and Suriname and that is why we are always leaving options open [for] the possibilities of collaborating in these areas because they can deal more with the production and processing of gas etc. The other countries are small and have more demand for refined products … So we will have to look, in the future, at how we can deal with those,” said the Vice President, who also holds responsibility for energy policies, when asked about this country’s plans for regional energy security.
“We get our oil share in the form of crude …we can do tolling at some stage when we become more sophisticated, have it refined and brought back maybe … but that is as you get more crude and are more sophisticated,” he added.
Trinidad and Tobago’s Prime Minister Keith Rowley and that country’s Minister of Energy Stuart Young underscored collaboration and using their existing infrastructure to help in the energy security process.
“I have one simple question: Out of the 640,000 plus barrels of oil per day that is being produced by Guyanese natural resources, owned by the people of Guyana, how much of that is actually being utilized for the energy security of the region?” Young asked as he delivered his address to the just concluded energy conference which was held at the Marriott Hotel.
He said that his country also has gas processing facilities that can be used. “Our ability, in Trinidad, to produce more LNG is there, because we have existing capacity at our plants and what we are looking for is access to proven reserves of gas. That can be and must be an important part of the solution for the other Caricom islands, as they move to changing out or updating their energy production and electricity production, because they can use LNG and use natural gas for the production of their electricity. It is more efficient and it is part of the transition and there is a supply coming from Trinidad, but we must have access to those proven reserves of gas,” he expressed.
The Trinidad and Tobago Energy Minister said that if discussions and questions are focused on making those investments a reality, the people will see it can work.
“How long would it take for the people who own those resources to get the returns of revenue? Wouldn’t you have to offer tax holidays? Wouldn’t you have to offer moratorium? Wouldn’t you have to offer incentives to the expenditure of those billions? Wouldn’t you then have to put down the type of infrastructure for the shipping… as opposed to if we were to collaborate? For example, right there in Trinidad, there is the existing plugins; send your gas resources and you will see your returns immediately. No wait, no moratorium, no need for incentives and immediate returns on your natural resources, which you then use for infrastructure in your countries as a return for the people of your respective countries,” he said.
“My message is a simple one; it is about taking responsibility for our destiny,” he added.
Using part of its oil share to be refined in Trinidad is not an immediate plan either, Jagdeo said, given that the country’s refinery has been out of use since 2018 and the feasibility of getting it up again through private sector effort has not been explored.
“We are entitled to a number of barrels of crude as part of profit oil. We sell those basically through a marketing arrangement that is publicly tendered at a benchmark. We don’t refine products here. The demand for the region is for refined products. Most of the other countries have a need for refined products so that excludes everything else, except Trinidad and Tobago, he said.
“That refinery has been mothballed since 2018. We don’t know what it will take right now to rehabilitate that and to bring it into production and whether that is the most feasible thing to do, especially in light of people being able to import fuel from external forces and not pay the external tariffs. At this stage, we can talk about it.”
As it relates to gas, Jagdeo said that Guyana’s strategy and plans will also take into account monetizing the associated gases that are in excess but that is not the immediate focus, since meeting local demand for citizens takes priority. He explained that ExxonMobil has consistently said that it prefers to use the gas for offshore works so a lot of how much gas will be available must be determined with the US oil major in those discussions.
He said monetizing the gas resources will need private sector investors to drive that initiative because the government will not use state resources to undertake studies, such as best configuration methods for processing the gas or which country to bring it from, for private sector investments . “This will be privately driven…,” he stressed.
“We can’t get a project between the Government of Guyana and the Government of Trinidad, you have to get investors. That is the approach we are taking. It is something that will be examined but the timing has to be when we are moving forward with the project,” Jagdeo said.
