Minister: Middle East tensions push oil revenue up to US$4M for T&T

Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

This coun­try’s rev­enue po­si­tion in­creased last Fri­day by US$4 mil­lion a month as a re­sult of high­er oil prices fol­low­ing the Mid­dle East war – and that sum is in ad­di­tion to US$10 mil­lion in oil rev­enue, which was es­ti­mat­ed ear­li­er last week, says En­er­gy Min­is­ter Roodal Mooni­lal.

Mooni­lal gave the in­for­ma­tion in the Low­er House last Fri­day, dur­ing a de­bate on an Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment mo­tion call­ing for mea­sures to mit­i­gate a de­vel­op­ing so­cial cri­sis in Trinidad and To­ba­go stem­ming from the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress Gov­ern­ment’s job cuts and oth­er mea­sures.

Last week, fol­low­ing the US-Is­rael war with Iran, oil prices shot up.

Mooni­lal said, “I get no great joy from con­flict all over the world. I al­ways say con­flict isn’t good – it has se­ri­ous prob­lems with life, lib­er­ty, prop­er­ty, etc. But to­day Brent oil prices are at US$92 ... that means our rev­enue po­si­tion just in­creased by US$4 mil­lion per month in the last 18 hours.”

He said the in­creased oil rev­enue meant that T&T’s so­cial and eco­nom­ic land­scape would change.

He dis­missed fig­ures which Op­po­si­tion MPs gave re­gard­ing the num­ber of peo­ple who have lost em­ploy­ment due to his Gov­ern­ment’s job cuts and are un­der­go­ing prob­lems.

“The on­ly peo­ple who re­al­ly lost dey job and have men­tal prob­lems is the (PNM) MPs op­po­site. They’re go­ing through a learn­ing curve, they’ve lost their jobs last April, and some of them – not all – are un­train­able and un­em­ploy­able...so we can un­der­stand their stress,” he added.