(Trinidad Guardian) Just a day after his return from Venezuela, Energy Minister Stuart Young proudly announced T&T’s achievement in securing substantial revenue from multinational corporations after Government renegotiated energy deals.
Speaking in Parliament on Friday, Young revealed that a team from BP Limited accompanied him to Venezuela on Thursday to discuss the promising development of a gas field in the Manakin-Cocuina region.
The Manakin-Cocuina field straddles the T&T-Venezuela maritime border, off the southeast coast of Trinidad and is estimated to contain just over one trillion cubic feet of natural gas.
Denying claims that the PNM regime had no clear energy policies, Young said if Government had followed the UNC’s energy policy, it would have lost out on billions.
“The UNC had been a set of knock knees and cowards with multinationals. When we engaged the multinationals respectfully, there was an outcry that the multinationals would pick up and leave. Instead, they have done the opposite. They are now asking us to negotiate with them,” Young revealed.
He said by restructuring energy deals with multinational corporations, Government was able to earn billions of dollars for the people of T&T.
“We renegotiated all the contracts and got billions of dollars in revenue which we would not have earned if we continued with the UNC energy policy,” he said.
Young noted that the Government has been liaising with other leaders on oil production, as T&T’s oil reserves were on the decline.
“Oil production from the period 2010 to 2015 dropped from 98,000 to 78,000 barrels. That is a 20,000 loss. We are facing a natural decline of 15,000 to 20,000 barrels per year,” he added.
Young said while the Opposition levels unfair criticism, the rest of the world was looking on at the latest energy developments.
“It’s quite remarkable that they say we have no plan for oil and gas. I challenge those on the other side to go and do a simple search and see Reuters, Forbes, all the leading energy newspapers yesterday and the day before with reports that I was in Venezuela conducting negotiations on behalf of the people of Trinidad and Tobago for a project with BP called Coquina Manakin. That is the news that is top of the news in global energy reports of today,” he boasted.
He said two weeks ago, talks were held with the Ministers of Energy in Egypt, Algeria and Qatar.
The development talks in Venezuela occurred following an easing of United States sanctions against Venezuela.
Reuters News Agency reported that the fields were unitised in 2015 but talks on the development were stalled upon imposition of US sanctions in 2019 against Venezuela.
Young’s delegation included the ministry’s Permanent Secretary Penelope Bradshaw-Niles, other key ministry personnel and executives from the National Gas Company (NGC). Other delegates at the meeting were a BP team led by bpTT president David Campbell.
The Venezuelan government was represented by a team led by Popular Power for Petroleum Minister Rafael Tellechea and his Vice Minister Juan Santana.