Chevron wants talks with T&T

Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­[email protected]

Less than 24 hours af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar met with Unit­ed States En­er­gy Sec­re­tary Chris Wright, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal says glob­al en­er­gy gi­ant Chevron is al­ready knock­ing on Trinidad and To­ba­go’s door.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia dur­ing Pan­davas’ Phag­wa cel­e­bra­tions at Palmiste Park in San Fer­nan­do, Mooni­lal al­so re­spond­ed to crit­ics who ques­tioned his ab­sence dur­ing the bi­lat­er­al dis­cus­sions with Wright, ex­plain­ing that the Prime Min­is­ter at­tend­ed a meet­ing of the Heads of Gov­ern­ment, where she would have dis­cussed var­i­ous mat­ters and could not take her en­tire Cab­i­net with her.

Mooni­lal said it was not by co­in­ci­dence that Chevron ex­pressed in­ter­est in do­ing busi­ness with T&T just 24 hours af­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar raised “cer­tain very im­por­tant mat­ters re­gard­ing the en­er­gy sec­tor” with Wright.

He added, “I be­lieve it is not co­in­ci­den­tal. I be­lieve it is not ac­ci­den­tal...This morn­ing, I re­ceived news from Chevron that they are ask­ing us to meet with their busi­ness de­vel­op­ment unit to fur­ther dis­cus­sions on the co­op­er­a­tion in en­er­gy sec­tor, not just ex­plo­ration and pro­duc­tion, but some mat­ters per­tain­ing to stor­age and so on.”

He re­called that dur­ing his re­cent vis­it to Guyana, he met the Chevron chair­man and dis­cussed us­ing T&T as a hub for their ship­ment of oil from Venezuela and oth­er mat­ters.

Mooni­lal said he would con­tact Chevron this morn­ing to sched­ule a meet­ing, which could be as ear­ly as next week.

Mooni­lal said this de­vel­op­ment fol­lows his re­cent an­nounce­ment that the gov­ern­ment in­tends to give two blocks to CNOOC (Chi­na Na­tion­al Off­shore Oil Cor­po­ra­tion), the third-largest oil and gas com­pa­ny in Chi­na.

“Exxon Mo­bil is here, CNOOC is here, Chevron is now at our door, we are open­ing now for dis­cus­sions. We are on to some­thing good. It is a very pos­i­tive time for Trinidad and To­ba­go,” said Mooni­lal, as he praised the Prime Min­is­ter.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the min­is­ter said T&T could re­ceive short-term ben­e­fits fol­low­ing news that Kuwait has stopped pro­duc­ing oil tem­porar­i­ly due to the war in the Mid­dle East.

“That has had a huge im­pact on glob­al mar­kets. Brent (crude) is now at $92-$93 and the price of nat­ur­al gas has in­creased as well. So, T&T can reap short-term re­wards from that notwith­stand­ing the in­crease of cost of liq­uid fu­els which we have to pur­chase be­cause the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion closed down the re­fin­ery, so we have to buy that now, those liq­uid fu­els.”

If the Guaracara re­fin­ery were op­er­at­ing, he said it would have been a “true wind­fall” for T&T.

He de­scribed as half-heart­ed and ill-ad­vised the Op­po­si­tion’s de­feat­ed mo­tion on ris­ing un­em­ploy­ment, which was end­ed abrupt­ly by the House Speak­er, trig­ger­ing Op­po­si­tion mem­bers to walk out of Par­lia­ment on Fri­day.

Mooni­lal said the Op­po­si­tion ran out of Par­lia­ment with their prover­bial tails be­tween their legs.

“They run away from the Par­lia­ment on Fri­day. The op­po­si­tion has no grav­i­tas. They have no stature. They have no root in the so­ci­ety any­more. I don’t know if they can take to the street. If they take to the street, they may get a rude awak­en­ing from the peo­ple who re­ject­ed them quite re­cent­ly,” he said.

Mooni­lal added that the pop­u­la­tion was not drift­ing, not even in small num­bers, to the Op­po­si­tion at this time.