PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

Amid chal­leng­ing and un­cer­tain glob­al head­winds, T&T will at­tempt to lever­age its cur­rent en­er­gy sec­tor as a means to achieve the re­quired en­er­gy tran­si­tion and di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion need­ed in the fu­ture.

This stance was re­it­er­at­ed by En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young dur­ing his keynote ad­dress at the Trinidad and To­ba­go En­er­gy Con­fer­ence, which was held at the Hy­att Re­gency yes­ter­day.

"Our en­er­gy sec­tor is at a point of re­gen­er­a­tion with re­new­ables be­com­ing a part of the do­mes­tic en­er­gy mix. How­ev­er, oil and gas are crit­i­cal to our en­er­gy trans­for­ma­tion by pro­vid­ing se­cure and af­ford­able en­er­gy dur­ing the tran­si­tion. We, there­fore, are com­mit­ted to the op­ti­mum ex­ploita­tion of our hy­dro­car­bon re­sources de­spite calls in some quar­ters for the ces­sa­tion of ex­plo­ration in the in­dus­try. This has been vin­di­cat­ed by the de­ci­sion of many of ad­vanced pe­tro­le­um economies who con­tin­ue to of­fer blocks for ex­plo­ration as well as the de­ci­sion of en­er­gy com­pa­nies to re­fo­cus their ef­forts on oil and gas," said Min­is­ter Young, who ac­knowl­edged there were sev­er­al geopo­lit­i­cal is­sues which have im­pact­ed the sec­tor and may yet af­fect it in the fu­ture. How­ev­er, he said the en­er­gy sec­tor re­mained the key dri­ver of the econ­o­my.

He said, "Trinidad and To­ba­go, as a small oil and gas pro­duc­er. will be im­pact­ed by these glob­al trends. The glob­al move­ment to clean en­er­gy has re­sult­ed in Gov­ern­ment tak­ing steps to di­ver­si­fy and strength­en our en­er­gy sec­tor. How­ev­er, this has not been at the ex­pense of oil and gas, which are the main­stay of our econ­o­my and will re­main so for the fore­see­able fu­ture. Our strat­e­gy has been to ac­cel­er­ate the ex­ploita­tion of our oil and gas re­sources, which is in keep­ing with in­dus­try trends and the mar­ket re­quire­ments."

He ex­plained the gov­ern­ment would con­tin­ue to shop the coun­try's hy­dro­car­bon re­sources via the bid round process, with de­tails con­cern­ing the up­com­ing deep wa­ter bid-round un­veiled mo­ments af­ter his speech was con­clud­ed.

The En­er­gy Min­is­ter said the Gov­ern­ment is very much in­vest­ed in the tran­si­tion away from hy­dro­car­bons but once again stressed that the tran­si­tion is a cost­ly process.

"In­vest­ment in clean en­er­gy is not in­signif­i­cant. The Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Bank not­ed that re­gion­al en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty will need scales of in­vest­ment of min­i­mum US$1.2 bil­lion an­nu­al­ly to achieve the re­gion’s goal of 47 per cent con­tri­bu­tion from re­new­ables by 2030. As Small Is­land De­vel­op­ing States we are sad­dled with fi­nan­cial de­ci­sions to ad­dress our en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty and re­silience needs with­in our own unique con­texts. In­vest­ments in these sec­tors re­quire strate­gic in­ter­na­tion­al part­ner­ships with the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tor to un­lock op­por­tu­ni­ties for clean, green, en­er­gy. Giv­en that tran­si­tion­al risks aris­ing from car­bon pric­ing will ma­te­ri­alise, it is im­por­tant the do­mes­tic en­er­gy un­der­take or part­ner with Gov­ern­ment to re­duce sub­stan­tial­ly their green­house gas emis­sions," he said.

He how­ev­er not­ed that in ad­di­tion to the Brechin Cas­tle So­lar Plant, Project Lara, wind en­er­gy is an­oth­er re­new­able en­er­gy source that is be­ing tar­get­ted.

"Through tech­ni­cal sup­port of the Eu­ro­pean Union and in col­lab­o­ra­tion with our state agency Na­tion­al En­er­gy, the Min­istry of En­er­gy is cur­rent­ly en­gaged in the con­duct of an on­shore Wind Re­source As­sess­ment Pro­gramme, aimed at pro­duc­ing bank­able da­ta to in­form fu­ture on­shore wind auc­tions. "