Kamla: US partnership can revive energy sector

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says agree­ments reached dur­ing a vis­it by Unit­ed States Deputy Sec­re­tary of State Christo­pher Lan­dau mark re­newed con­fi­dence in T&T, and could help dri­ve in­vest­ment, en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty and in­dus­tri­al de­vel­op­ment.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar made the com­ment at a sign­ing cer­e­mo­ny dur­ing Lan­dau’s of­fi­cial vis­it to T&T yes­ter­day.

She iden­ti­fied three ma­jor com­mer­cial ini­tia­tives: Curlew Mid­stream’s pro­posed fu­el-stor­age and bunker­ing ter­mi­nal at Point Lisas, Pin­na­cle Steel and Vana­di­um Cor­po­ra­tion’s pro­posed restora­tion of the for­mer IS­COTT plant, and agree­ments be­tween the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny and BP linked to the Man­akin-Cocuina cross-bor­der gas field.

“To­day, our na­tions turn long­stand­ing friend­ship in­to ac­tion, in­to cre­at­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for our peo­ple,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.

She said the Man­akin-Cocuina agree­ments had re­moved a ma­jor ob­sta­cle to de­vel­op­ment of the field, al­low­ing BP to ac­cel­er­ate its fi­nal in­vest­ment de­ci­sion.

Man­akin, in T&T’s Block 5(b), and Cocuina, in Venezuela’s Platafor­ma Deltana Block 4, are be­ing de­vel­oped as a sin­gle unit, with T&T hold­ing a 66 per cent share and Venezuela 34 per cent.

The Prime Min­is­ter not­ed that both gov­ern­ments agreed to de­vel­op the field as a sin­gle unit in Feb­ru­ary 2015, when she was last prime min­is­ter.

“To­day, more than ten years lat­er, I’m clos­ing the deal, and we are al­ready get­ting to work,” she said.

She said 25 per cent of the gas is ex­pect­ed to sup­port do­mes­tic pow­er gen­er­a­tion, down­stream in­dus­tries and light-in­dus­tri­al cus­tomers, while the re­main­ing 75 per cent would sup­port LNG pro­duc­tion and in­creased sup­ply to At­lantic LNG from 2027.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so high­light­ed de­vel­op­ments sur­round­ing the Ca­lyp­so deep-wa­ter gas project, say­ing BP’s agree­ment last week to ac­quire Wood­side’s 70 per cent in­ter­est would al­low BP to as­sume op­er­a­tor­ship and po­ten­tial­ly ac­cel­er­ate the project’s fi­nal in­vest­ment de­ci­sion.

She said the Gov­ern­ment had pushed Wood­side to ei­ther de­vel­op the project or sell its in­ter­est.

“Af­ter one year, you were able to ac­quire all the shares from Wood­side, so you’re now 100 per cent tied up with that Ca­lyp­so field,” she told BP Trinidad and To­ba­go pres­i­dent David Camp­bell.

Ca­lyp­so con­tains an es­ti­mat­ed 4.4 tril­lion cu­bic feet of pre­dom­i­nant­ly dry, sweet gas, ac­cord­ing to the Prime Min­is­ter.

She al­so point­ed to Exxon­Mo­bil’s re­turn to T&T and com­ple­tion of seis­mic ac­qui­si­tion in its ul­tra-deep-wa­ter acreage as an­oth­er in­di­ca­tion of re­newed in­ter­est in the coun­try’s en­er­gy sec­tor.

Be­yond en­er­gy, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the Unit­ed States part­ner­ship in­clud­ed co­op­er­a­tion on or­gan­ised crime, nar­cotics and hu­man and firearms traf­fick­ing, as well as health and re­gion­al diplo­ma­cy.

She said the pro­posed restora­tion of the for­mer Arcelor­Mit­tal plant could re­store steel-mak­ing ca­pac­i­ty, cre­ate jobs and ben­e­fit lo­cal con­trac­tors and man­u­fac­tur­ers, while Curlew Mid­stream’s pro­posed ter­mi­nal could strength­en Point Lisas’ en­er­gy and mar­itime in­fra­struc­ture.

“We are restor­ing Point Lisas as an en­gine of growth,” she said.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said T&T’s re­la­tion­ship with the Unit­ed States re­mained crit­i­cal, not­ing that the coun­try had qual­i­fied for a low­er ten per cent US tar­iff fol­low­ing en­gage­ments be­tween For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sean Sobers and the Unit­ed States Trade Rep­re­sen­ta­tive.

She said the ini­tia­tives demon­strat­ed her Gov­ern­ment’s com­mit­ment to at­tract­ing in­ter­na­tion­al in­vest­ment and cre­at­ing jobs.

“Two na­tions, two proud an­niver­saries, one shared fu­ture,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.

Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar has thanked US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump and his ad­min­is­tra­tion for re­duc­ing T&T’s tar­iff rate to ten per cent.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the low­er rate fol­lowed en­gage­ments be­tween For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sean Sobers and the Unit­ed States Trade Rep­re­sen­ta­tive in Wash­ing­ton.

“I want to take a mo­ment to thank Pres­i­dent Trump and his team with your good self for all the bar­gain­ing that we’ve done,” she said.

She al­so thanked Sobers for rep­re­sent­ing T&T in the ne­go­ti­a­tions, say­ing the low­er tar­iff meant “less we had to pay”.

The Prime Min­is­ter said T&T’s qual­i­fi­ca­tion for the ten per cent rate would ben­e­fit the coun­try’s ex­porters and econ­o­my.