00:00Energy expert Javed Razak says things are moving in the right direction for Trinidad and Tobago, but some patience is required.
00:10He notes that the time between a bid round and actual production can be 10 to 12 years, and if it's deep water, it can go to 15 years.
00:21There's a lot of good things happening with respect to bid rounds. Blocks have gone out, been signed. There's impending exploration activity onshore and offshore, which is important, necessary, completely critical.
00:33The bottom line, of course, is what's the actual oil and gas production? Where are we at today? And of course, how does that read on to the regular person on the street, right, in terms of foreign exchange coming into the country, in terms of employment, in terms of those sort of things?
00:48So on that front, the bottom line is not in a great place right now.
00:54With new sanctions being laid by newly elected U.S. President Donald Trump and his plans to boost America's own oil output, there have been concerns over how it will impact the local sector.
01:07However, Razak tells the Morning Edition, things are looking positive.
01:12Speaking with some of the reps from Shell and from the government yesterday and over the last few weeks, there's a surprising sense of optimism on their side that the dragon will go forward, as well as the other Venezuelan fields.
01:23I was a bit surprised myself because I thought it was all still up in the air, but the reps, they quietly speak on the side and they say that they feel quite confident.
01:32I don't know if they have some assurances that things are progressing well. I assume that the U.S. government is being lobbied by our government, by Shell, by BP and by other interests as well to let these projects go forward.
01:45Razak adds that focus should also be on where Trinidad and Tobago will be getting its own oil from.
01:53We don't see the U.S. stepping up their production as a problem for our export market. What it may do is drive down prices to some extent, which is natural, and we don't have any control over that.
02:06What we need to focus on is not whether the U.S. is drilling more or not, and it's how we are going to maximize our supply chain.
02:14How do we make sure that the Pointless plants and so on are able to operate at higher capacity and we can derive more volume from that?
02:22Of course, it comes down to a matter of whether we have enough gas or not and where we're going to get gas from.
Be the first to comment